FMF-Issue-01-23-26(Featured)

mobile masthead 5MIN

Paradigm Pressroom’s 5 Bullets is a daily e-letter covering the economy and the markets, reaching 120,000 paying subscribers of the renowned financial publishing firm Paradigm Press.

Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

$1.5 Trillion 

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Fed Fallout: Main Character Energy
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;This is how monetary policy is made in emerging markets with weak institutions.&rdquo;
That sentence appeared in a joint public statement released this month by former Federal Reserve chairs &mdash; including Janet Yellen, Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan &mdash; responding to the Justice Department opening a criminal inquiry into Fed Chair Jerome Powell.
Such tactics, they say high-handedly, have &ldquo;highly negative consequences for inflation and the functioning of [economies] more broadly&hellip; It has no place in the United States, whose greatest strength is the rule of law, which is at the foundation of our economic success.&rdquo;
Days later, President Trump told the World Economic Forum in Davos: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll be announcing a new Fed chairman in the not too distant future,&rdquo; adding &ldquo;we have a terrible chairman right now.&rdquo;
The reaction from the Davos set was swift &mdash; and anxious. Which is understandable. But it also invites a reality check.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Federal Reserve independence has never been absolute. Presidents have pressured central bankers for as long as the institution has existed.
In the 1960s, for instance, President Lyndon B. Johnson physically manhandled Fed chair William McChesney Martin over interest rates.
Martin&rsquo;s successor, Arthur Burns, accommodated President Richard Nixon ahead of the 1972 election, a decision that helped fuel the inflationary mess of the 1970s.
More recently, President Joe Biden publicly reminded Powell that getting inflation under control rested squarely on the Fed.
&ldquo;To this day the 12 regional Federal Reserve banks are owned privately by the banks in each region,&rdquo; Jim Rickards notes. &ldquo;Direction is provided by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System appointed by the U.S. president and based in Washington, D.C.
<a href="https://5minforecast.com/2023/05/16/aftershock/">&ldquo;The overall system</a> is a perfect hybrid of public and private interests.&rdquo;
So the idea that Trump has shattered some previously pristine norm is overstated. What has changed is the scale of the Fed&rsquo;s power &mdash; and the consequences of wielding it so openly.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> After the 2008 financial crisis, the Fed and its global peers crossed lines that once seemed uncrossable. 
Policy rates fell to zero or below. Quantitative easing (QE) expanded central-bank balance sheets by trillions. The European Central Bank, the Swiss National Bank and the Bank of Japan all followed similar paths.
Markets responded exactly as intended. Asset prices soared, borrowing costs collapsed and governments discovered they could finance deficits cheaply and almost indefinitely .
The lesson for elected officials was unavoidable: Monetary policy could stimulate the economy faster and more forcefully than fiscal policy ever could.
As Eric Salzman writes at Racket News, that lesson dramatically increased the temptation to influence the Fed:
<blockquote>By deploying extraordinary monetary policy from 2008&ndash;2018 and then from 2020&ndash;2022, the Fed has shown every president, both present and future, that those powers can juice the economy in ways that fiscal policy can rarely match.</blockquote>
Once a central bank demonstrates it can move markets with a sentence, presidents inevitably care who holds the microphone at post-FOMC press conferences.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> That microphone amplified under Alan Greenspan &mdash; nickname: &ldquo;the Maestro&rdquo; &mdash; whose tenure marked the Fed&rsquo;s brush with mainstream celebrity. 
And it reached a fever pitch after the financial crisis of 2008 when Ben Bernanke rewrote the central-bank playbook with zero rates, massive asset purchases and a banking-system bailout &mdash; later memorialized in Bernanke&rsquo;s self-aggrandizing memoir.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1FrGZMDDlC1mdwR6pNcyLM/ad46eb5e3ff4e71c5d985821ff0187d6/FMF-Issue-01-22-26_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" /> Bernanke&rsquo;s book advance has never been disclosed&hellip;
From that point forward, the Fed was no longer just a regulator. It had, to quote the kids, main character energy.
FOMC meetings became national events, press conferences were parsed like earnings calls and regional Fed presidents became media fixtures. They traveled to Davos and Jackson Hole not as technicians, but as global figures.
This visibility was not imposed on the Fed. It was chosen. And once chosen, independence became harder to defend. A central bank that cultivates such attention cannot plausibly claim insulation from politics.
That&rsquo;s the missing context behind the Lisa Cook case.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> When Trump moved to fire Fed governor Lisa Cook for cause &mdash; citing alleged mortgage fraud &mdash; Cook refused to leave, setting off a legal fight now before the Supreme Court. 
This week, SCOTUS heard arguments in the case. The justices&rsquo; questions signaled real discomfort with the idea that a president could unilaterally declare &ldquo;cause&rdquo; under the Federal Reserve Act.
For now, Cook remains on the job while the courts sort it out. (It&rsquo;s fair to note that no court has ruled that Cook committed mortgage fraud for two homes purchased in 2021.)
But the episode exposes the Fed&rsquo;s real vulnerability. This is the price of prominence. A quieter Fed &mdash; one that operated without the aura of omnipotence &mdash; might be harder to target. (Perhaps Ms. Cook&rsquo;s mortgage paperwork would not have drawn this level of attention?)
True, the Fed has never been truly independent from politics. Presidents have always leaned on, nudged and sometimes even shoved.
But what changed after 2008 is the Fed showed off how much it can do &mdash; indefinite QE, asset purchases, full-spectrum market support &mdash; and then built a public ritual around that power.
With power came attention. And power and attention invite attempts to control the institution &mdash; whether through nominations, investigations or court fights.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Bond Exit, Stock Stampede
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;While foreigners may be SELLING AMERICAN bonds, they appear to be BUYING AMERICAN stocks!&rdquo; pro trader Enrique Abeyta emphasizes.
We touched on bonds earlier this week &mdash; using <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-price-cap-trap#3">China</a> as a clear example. Compared with January 2025, China&rsquo;s Treasury exposure is now nearly 10% lower.
&ldquo;Foreign-held U.S. equities as a percentage of foreign-held assets is at a new all-time high, breaking the previous record set back in 1968,&rdquo; Enrique notes.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6akfryh2978qE11ARv6Vvb/a1e57e51363d1184082cec3da9a86fde/FMF-Issue-01-22-26_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" /> Source: NDR Inc.
Stocks are setting up nicely this afternoon. The Nasdaq&rsquo;s up 1% to 23,460 while the Dow and S&amp;P 500 are up 0.80% and 0.65% respectively.
As for crude, it&rsquo;s down 2%, under $60 for a barrel of WTI. But gold and silver are scorching hot! At record-breaking prices, in fact. Gold&rsquo;s up 1.70% to $4,920 per ounce, and silver&rsquo;s up 3.70% to $95.
The crypto market, however, is seeing red. Bitcoin&rsquo;s down 0.40% to $89,500 while Ethereum&rsquo;s down 2.45% to $2,945.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />The New Gold Order
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> For most of the modern era, gold pricing power rested firmly in the West.
&ldquo;The world&rsquo;s gold trade revolved around two cities: London and New York,&rdquo; says Fiore Group CEO Frank Giustra. Those markets &mdash; anchored by the London Bullion Market Association and New York&rsquo;s futures exchange (COMEX) &mdash; set prices for bullion across the globe.
Giustra&rsquo;s career unfolded inside that system. In the 1980s, he moved to London to help finance junior mining companies, raising capital as European institutions piled into gold. The structure was clear and dollar-centric.
&ldquo;The prices you see ticking across your screen today &mdash; &lsquo;spot gold&rsquo; and &lsquo;gold futures&rsquo; &mdash; still come from the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) and COMEX,&rdquo; he writes. Every ounce, regardless of origin, was priced in U.S. dollars.
That dominance was a legacy of Bretton Woods. In 1944, the dollar was pegged to gold at $35 an ounce, reflecting the United States&rsquo; postwar stockpile and economic strength. When President Richard Nixon closed the gold window in 1971, the system shifted to pure fiat.
As Giustra puts it, the message became: &ldquo;Trust us &mdash; our economy&rsquo;s strong, and our money&rsquo;s as good as gold.&rdquo; The petrodollar system, meanwhile, kept the dollar on top.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The first serious challenge emerged in 2002, when China launched the Shanghai Gold Exchange. It introduced something missing from Western markets: mandatory physical delivery.
While Giustra estimates around 95% of trades on COMEX are paper contracts, Shanghai required real bullion to change hands, at least domestically.
But China went further in 2014 with the Shanghai International Gold Exchange, allowing foreign participants to trade gold in yuan rather than dollars. In 2016, it introduced the Shanghai Gold Benchmark Price, a daily yuan-denominated auction. For the first time in a century, London had a serious counterpart.
Global events amplified the shift. The 2008 financial crisis exposed the fragility of leverage and monetary expansion. COVID-era stimulus accelerated it. Then, in 2022, the freezing of Russian reserves forced other nations to ask, as Giustra observes: &ldquo;What if we&rsquo;re next?&rdquo; Central banks responded by buying physical gold and reducing reliance on dollar assets.
The result has been a slow rebalancing. &ldquo;The Shanghai Gold Exchange won&rsquo;t replace COMEX or LBMA overnight,&rdquo; Giustra says, &ldquo;and the dollar won&rsquo;t vanish tomorrow.&rdquo; Still, every trade settled in yuan and every bar vaulted outside Western control marks a subtle transfer of power.
Giustra is a long-time power broker in mining and metals; he&rsquo;s been around these markets long enough to recognize structural change when he sees it. If gold is quietly reclaiming its role as real money, Shanghai &mdash; not London or New York &mdash; may be the future.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />&ldquo;AI Tax&rdquo; (Not What You Think)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> A study of 5,000 white-collar workers by the AI consulting firm Section finds a striking disconnect between executives and employees when using the AI tools. 
Two-thirds of nonmanagement employees respond AI saves them less than two hours per week &mdash; or no time at all. More than 40% of executives, meanwhile, report saving over eight hours a week.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5J0IyuaOEoZcSlybrelDl7/b2d3b1ce6d7914a4a5b7a4a642aa3dbc/FMF-Issue-01-22-26_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" /> Source: Section, Stephanie Stamm, Wall Street Journal
&ldquo;Executives automatically assume AI is going to be the savior,&rdquo; says Steve McGarvey, a user-experience designer in Raleigh, N.C. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t count the number of times that I&rsquo;ve sought a solution for a problem, asked an LLM and it gave me a solution [that] was completely wrong.&rdquo;
McGarvey says AI helps with research &mdash; but only if you already know enough to spot when it&rsquo;s wrong. &ldquo;Unless you have some judgment or discernment in the field you&rsquo;re in,&rdquo; he adds, &ldquo;you could really do harm.&rdquo;
That friction has a cost. A report from Workday calls it an &ldquo;AI tax&rdquo; on productivity: time saved, then quietly spent correcting errors. Even at the top, the payoff remains elusive. In a PricewaterhouseCoopers survey presented at Davos, just 12% of CEOs say AI delivered both cost savings and revenue gains.
But some companies have already tested AI&rsquo;s limits. And then re-tested. Klarna replaced hundreds of customer-service agents with AI &mdash; then rehired humans for harder questions. Duolingo said AI would replace contractors, then ended 2024 with a 14% larger staff.
Bottom line: Workers aren&rsquo;t impressed. To wit, 40% of respondents say they&rsquo;d be fine never using AI again.
[At the Paradigm app&rsquo;s Daily Feed, our managing editor Dave Gonigam commented on this story: &ldquo;Somewhere in the Great Beyond, Dilbert creator Scott Adams is having a hearty laugh.&rdquo;
Haven&rsquo;t downloaded the app yet? Join thousands of your fellow Paradigm subscribers at the instructions <a href="https://d2z65klgtz99km.cloudfront.net/PPG-App/">right here.</a>]
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Trump 2.0
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Better off,&rdquo; a longtime reader responds to Trump&rsquo;s assessment. &ldquo;Over the last three years, as octogenarians, we assiduously eliminated all debt, including the home equity loan.
&ldquo;Then we sold municipals and converted to energy and miners with reinvested dividends. We are steadily adding to our net worth every month. We feel more secure now than we did one&ndash;three years ago. Guidance from Paradigm has been a great help.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;I am financially worse off,&rdquo; says another contributor. &ldquo;As a retiree, the rising costs of food, Medicare and onerous taxes are hurting me. 
&ldquo;I am totally irritated that the Social Security miserly increases are completely wiped out just by the increases in Medicare costs. But the real kicker to me is the money in both Social Security and Medicare is MY money.
&ldquo;I worked for 40 years, made over six figures and maxed out my 401(k) yearly. I should be living comfortably, but I have to pull from my retirement monthly just to stay in my home. We've given up eating out, vacations, concerts and theater.
&ldquo;I understand how policies Trump is working to institute will help our country; it just may be too late for me.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Has the Trump 2.0 administration made me better off than I was a year ago?&rdquo; adds our final correspondent today.
&ldquo;Financially, yes. But only because his immigration policy has opened up thousands of jobs in
detention operations. A new detention facility opened up in my state, and I was able get a
job that pays 50% more under a federal contract than what I was making in the same position
working in a state-run prison. Not everyone is so fortunate.
&ldquo;As for his economic policies, I agree that capping interest rates is a VERY BAD idea. The jury is
still out on all of his tariffs, and will be for some time. I remain optimistic that the long-term
gain will be worth the (hopefully) short-term pain.
&ldquo;Of course, the above goes out the window if his foreign policy gets us all incinerated.&rdquo;
Thanks to everyone who took the time to write in &mdash; the notes, stories and perspectives are genuinely appreciated.
More soon&hellip; And thanks for being part of the 5 Bullets family!

FMF-Issue-01-22-26(Featured)

Main Character Monetary Policy

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" /> Markets love a villain.
This week&rsquo;s villain, according to the mainstream narrative, is Greenland &mdash; or rather, the idea that the U.S. administration&rsquo;s trade posture is spooking global investors. That story is neat, politically satisfying&hellip; but wrong?
Yesterday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said something revealing &mdash; and far less convenient &mdash; when asked about the sudden volatility in global markets.
<blockquote>The Japanese bond market had a six-standard deviation move for the past two days. That would be in their 10-year bonds. I&rsquo;ve been in touch with my economic counterparts in Japan, and urged them to take the necessary measures to stabilize their bond market. </blockquote>
<blockquote>But that&rsquo;s spilling over into all bond markets. German yields are up. French yields are up. U.S. yields are up. Again, it&rsquo;s mostly the Japanese bond market. It&rsquo;s got nothing to do with Greenland.</blockquote>
Of course, Bessent is speaking in the administration&rsquo;s self-interest. But what if he&rsquo;s right?
To understand why he might be, you have to look past headlines and into the scaffolding of global markets &mdash; specifically, the quiet role Japan has played in financing risk around the world.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;For years, global markets have been floating on something they barely talk about,&rdquo; writes Sean Ring, editor of The Rude Awakening. &ldquo;No, not earnings. Or productivity. Try this: cheap yen.&rdquo;
For decades after Japan&rsquo;s 1989 stock market collapse, the Bank of Japan held interest rates near zero, turning the yen into the world&rsquo;s cheapest and most predictable source of borrowing.
Global investors borrowed yen, converted it into other currencies including dollars and euros and invested in higher-return assets abroad.
The power of this yen carry trade was the cheap, steady funding behind it. As long as borrowing costs stayed low and stable, the trade worked.
But that stability is now under strain.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Recently, Japan&rsquo;s 10-year government bond yield has surged to 2.34% &mdash; a level not seen in over 25 years.
&ldquo;To Americans used to 4&ndash;5% Treasuries, [that] might not sound dramatic,&rdquo; Sean adds, &ldquo;but in Japan it&rsquo;s seismic.&rdquo;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1c5JZrjMsi028vw7xk6bss/a3f9c218fb290e1acf3358202a0fb225/FMF-Issue-01-21-26_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" /> Sean: &ldquo;This is not the gold chart. It&rsquo;s the Japanese 10-year yield.&rdquo;
Japan carries public debt well north of 250% of GDP. Its fiscal system functions because interest costs have long been suppressed. But when yields rise, markets start asking questions that haven&rsquo;t mattered in years.
&ldquo;Borrowing in yen is no longer free,&rdquo; Sean writes. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s worse is that it&rsquo;s no longer predictable.&rdquo; That uncertainty is lethal to leveraged trades.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Complicating matters further, Japan is dealing with a weak yen. 
Higher bond yields usually strengthen a country&rsquo;s currency. But despite rising yields, the yen remains historically weak as markets weigh Japan&rsquo;s shifting fiscal policy.&nbsp;
Notably, the yen carry trade relies on thin margins. Investors borrow cheaply in one currency and invest elsewhere, assuming exchange rates won&rsquo;t move sharply against them. The real risk isn&rsquo;t that the yen stays weak &mdash; it&rsquo;s that it suddenly strengthens.
If that happens, borrowing costs jump immediately. Losses appear quickly. Brokers issue margin calls, demanding fresh cash or collateral to offset losses. Positions are closed under pressure.
When carry trades unwind? &ldquo;They die,&rdquo; Sean says. &ldquo;Violently.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> An unwind of the yen carry trade spreads far beyond Japan. It shows up in portfolios everywhere. Estimates of yen carry trade exposure run into the trillions of dollars; even a partial unwind can move markets fast.
And the sequence of events follows a typical pattern:
<ul>
<li>Japanese bond volatility spikes</li>
<li>Funding assumptions break</li>
<li>And leveraged traders face margin pressure.</li>
</ul>
They sell whatever they can &mdash; not because something is wrong with those assets, but because those assets are liquid. &ldquo;U.S. equities&hellip; Emerging-market ETFs&hellip; Crypto,&rdquo; Sean says. &ldquo;They just happen to be the piggy bank.&rdquo;
This is why these episodes seem arbitrary. &ldquo;Earnings didn&rsquo;t collapse. Consumers didn&rsquo;t suddenly stop spending.&rdquo; Instead, a hidden spigot quietly turns off.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />The 2024 Warning Shot
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> If this all feels familiar, it should. In the summer of 2024, global markets seized up after a Bank of Japan rate hike &mdash; and, more importantly, signals that more tightening could follow.
After a quarter century of near-zero rates, many investors had built portfolios on the assumption that yen funding would always be available. When that assumption wobbled, assets around the world were sold to close positions.
As our managing editor Dave Gonigam wrote in the aftermath, the <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/apology-from-tokyo">subtext from Tokyo</a> was essentially: &ldquo;We&rsquo;re really sorry about screwing up global markets for three days.&rdquo;
The Wall Street Journal that day: &ldquo;A week after Japan&rsquo;s top central banker shook up global markets with comments about raising interest rates, one of his deputies walked them back [and] promised not to raise rates when markets are unstable.&rdquo;
That reassurance worked. Selling pressure eased. Markets stabilized. What didn&rsquo;t change was the underlying dependence on cheap yen funding.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> This isn&rsquo;t about Japan &ldquo;screwing up&rdquo; the world. &ldquo;Japan is the match, not the gasoline,&rdquo; says Sean.
&ldquo;The gasoline is global leverage built on cheap funding&rdquo; in a market already &ldquo;priced for perfection,&rdquo; Sean says wryly &mdash; where assets are expensive, the reward for taking risk is thin and many investors are crowded into the same trades.
&ldquo;Wall Street,&rdquo; Sean concludes, &ldquo;never prices this stuff in until it has to.&rdquo;
That&rsquo;s why Bessent&rsquo;s comment matters. If this volatility were truly about Greenland or tariffs, you&rsquo;d expect a contained reaction.
What we&rsquo;re seeing instead is broader stress &mdash; the signature of funding problems, not trade headlines.
When the quiet engines that support risk assets start to sputter, markets test them. Hard. That doesn&rsquo;t mean collapse is imminent. It does mean a hidden support beam is cracking.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The U.S. stock market&rsquo;s in recovery mode today. The three major indexes have flipped to green, with the Dow up 0.60% to 48,785&hellip; the S&amp;P 500 up 0.50% to 6,830&hellip; and the tech-heavy Nasdaq up 0.35% to 23,035. (As we understand it, Trump says U.S. military intervention in Greenland is off the table.)
For the most part, commodities are likewise in green territory. The price of oil&rsquo;s up 0.65% to $60.75 for a barrel of West Texas crude. At the same time, gold&rsquo;s marching higher: up 1.65% to $4,845.70 per ounce. Silver, on the other hand, has pulled back 1.60%, but still above $93.
The crypto market, however, is getting clobbered. Bitcoin&rsquo;s down 1.35% to $88,300 while Ethereum&rsquo;s slipped 2.50% to $2,920.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />China&rsquo;s Cold Reality
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> China can build all the solar panels it wants. But the country still runs on coal.
In 2024, coal supplied about 60% of China&rsquo;s primary energy, with oil around 20% and natural gas around 9&ndash;10%, according to the IEA and EIA.
<ul>
<li>China&rsquo;s dependence on coal is not merely large &mdash; it&rsquo;s historically unprecedented. The country now burns about 56% of all coal consumed globally, roughly twenty times the combined usage of the European Union</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Since 2000, China has tripled its coal consumption. The increase alone over that period is eight times larger than total U.S. coal use today.</li>
</ul>
Whatever China&rsquo;s climate ambitions may be, its energy system remains overwhelmingly carbon-intensive.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> And yet Western media coverage routinely portrays China as a climate leader. 
This tendency has intensified since Donald Trump returned to the White House, as comparisons between U.S. rhetoric and Chinese industrial policy have become a narrative device.
In late September, for instance, major media outlets framed China&rsquo;s incremental climate gestures as meaningful progress &ldquo;next to Trump&rsquo;s retreat.&rdquo; Early this month, Foreign Policy went further, asking whether China could &ldquo;replace an absent America in the climate fight.&rdquo;
One passage from that article neatly captures the prevailing view: Chinese officials, it argues, &ldquo;never bought the argument that emissions reductions would cause economic harm,&rdquo; instead embracing clean technology as a defining industry of the 21st century.
The problem is not that this statement is false. It&rsquo;s that it&rsquo;s incomplete to the point of being misleading. Chinese officials never feared economic damage from emissions reductions &mdash; because they have never meaningfully reduced emissions.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/bBNBsbxjAE0Mw6OdhIUH7/fe9c51cb87f477254c0dfb7f867fba09/FMF-Issue-01-21-26_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" /> Source: Statistical Review of World Energy, Doomberg
On the contrary, China has continued expanding coal production, approving new coal plants and increasing total fossil-fuel consumption even as it dominates global manufacturing of solar panels, batteries and wind turbines.
The confusion deepened in October, when the British think tank Ember released its midyear review of global electricity trends. Headlines quickly followed, proclaiming that renewables had overtaken coal in global power generation and that China&rsquo;s &ldquo;clean energy growth&rdquo; was driving an irreversible transition.
But Ember&rsquo;s claims apply narrowly to electricity generation, not total energy use &mdash; and only over a six-month window. Coal remains indispensable to China&rsquo;s industrial economy, heavy manufacturing, steelmaking and chemical production. Electricity statistics do not capture those realities.
China is building renewables at scale. It is also burning more coal than the rest of the world combined. Both can be true at the same time &mdash; and they are.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Quiet Luxury?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> First-class is supposed to be the airline&rsquo;s show pony &mdash; the partitioned place where things are more refined and faintly aspirational.
Which is why the meal shared by X user and imaging scientist Peyman Milanfar didn&rsquo;t land. Flying first-class on United Airlines, Milanfar posted a photo of what was described as a &ldquo;salad.&rdquo;
The bowl was full &mdash; no shrinkflation here &mdash; but the contents were gravely unappetizing&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5LisCYig63cLBwKsZI6Pug/911d8872702112eb129ca84ab141ffdd/FMF-Issue-01-21-26_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
In an era of higher fares, airline food has become emblematic &mdash; a reminder that paying more no longer guarantees better. Starting with the meal.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Trump&rsquo;s Report Card
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Reading The 5 had me recapping 2025. It&rsquo;s been a mixed bag for me,&rdquo; says our first contributor today.
&ldquo;Bad:
<ul>
<li>I work for a government contractor. DOGE activities resulted in many cancelled contracts, and the company laid off 20% of its workforce</li>
<li>Despite the above, the government is still spending way more than it receives in revenues</li>
<li>Lots of large pendulum swings with markets</li>
<li>Where is the accountability for the sins of the past?</li>
</ul>
&ldquo;Good:
<ul>
<li>Lower taxes</li>
<li>Enforcement of immigration laws</li>
<li>Lower gasoline prices (not so much with anything else, though).</li>
</ul>
&ldquo;Generally, I have been OK financially because I got lucky and avoided the layoff ax, but it was close. I just don&rsquo;t understand how DOGE caused all that uproar yet the government is still spending like a drunken sailor.
&ldquo;People in the U.S. have to suffer immensely, I guess, before they actually vote out the fraudsters in Congress.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;A high-energy, business-savvy patriot without career political baggage has replaced a ruinous puppet as leader of the free world,&rdquo; writes an optimistic contributor.
&ldquo;America's future &mdash; including AI and reshoring &mdash; appears unprecedentedly bright, despite China, Russia and Iran. Investing in Rickards&rsquo; opportunities has proven very beneficial.&rdquo;
We love hearing that Rickards&rsquo; trades have made a measurable difference! And we&rsquo;re thrilled by the volume of your replies, grading Trump&rsquo;s presidency, one year into his second term.
If you didn&rsquo;t get a chance to write in, feel free &mdash; <a href="mailto:feedback@paradigmpressroom.com">the inbox is always open.</a>

FMF-Issue-01-21-26(Featured)

Markets Love a Villain

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Forecast Fulfilled (USAR)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Uncle Sam&rsquo;s stock-buying spree is moving into an aggressive new phase&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/MwLOFboBFMU5y7MXWoFcB/315da09f9e99687ce131f6b4d97eddd6/FMF-Issue-01-26-26_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
&ldquo;The Trump administration is planning to inject $1.6 billion into an American rare earths company, its biggest investment in the sector,&rdquo; reported the Financial Times on Saturday &mdash; &ldquo;in Washington&rsquo;s latest foray into private industry to shore up supplies of key minerals.&rdquo;
Citing the usual &ldquo;people familiar with the matter,&rdquo; the FT says the Commerce Department will take a 10% stake in USA Rare Earth (USAR). A formal announcement is expected today.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> To be sure, management was dropping hints about this arrangement as long ago as October. We chronicled it right here.
On Thursday Oct. 2, CEO Barbara Humpton told CNBC her company is &ldquo;in close communication&rdquo; with the White House.
CFO Robert Steele was more specific &mdash; saying the government might be &ldquo;a capital source through the combination of loans, grants and other potential opportunities.&rdquo;
Key point: The Pentagon had already taken a 15% stake in another rare-earth player, MP Materials last summer (much to the benefit of many Paradigm Press readers.)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> All of this is music to the ears of Paradigm readers who took action back in August.
On Thursday Aug. 7, we convened our first &ldquo;All-In Summit.&rdquo;
Our macro maven Jim Rickards&hellip; our AI-and-crypto authority James Altucher&hellip; our trading pro Enrique Abeyta&hellip; all of them were in agreement USAR was a screaming buy.
After management began dropping hints about a deal with the feds in early October, shares began to soar. On Oct. 13, readers were urged to sell half their position for a 191% gain. The timing couldn&rsquo;t have been better; that sell recommendation marked a near-term top.
The rest of the position? Let it ride, readers were told. This is textbook money management &mdash; and it&rsquo;s paying off handsomely. Of course, shares are taking off again this morning &mdash; up 19% in early trade.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/41la5M4yIOukjn66WWqPKc/26a2e65caa7917c52ab017d609c2e571/FMF-Issue-01-26-26_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Whether or not you laid on this trade&hellip; you might naturally wonder when Paradigm&rsquo;s leading lights might come to a consensus on another recommendation with similar potential.
All I can do today is to counsel patience.
The last thing we want to do is force our editors to reach agreement where agreement doesn&rsquo;t really exist just so we can sell more subscriptions. Agreement has to be reached authentically.
That said, I&rsquo;ve been privy to some very interesting backchannel discussions in recent days. Something&rsquo;s in the works that might not be exactly like the USAR recommendation&hellip; but that I think readers will like.
That&rsquo;s all I can say right now without violating any confidences. But watch this space as we move from January into February&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Gold $5K
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Do you see any bearish catalysts in the near future that would signal an end to the current gold bull market?&rdquo; a reader wrote Jim Rickards last week.
If anything, the question is even more timely this morning. Gold punched decisively through $5,000 when electronic trading opened for the week last night. And just like that, $5,100 is in sight; at last check the bid is up $111 to $5,094. Silver is screaming even higher &mdash; up $8.76 as we write to $111.84.
Jim&rsquo;s answer to Strategic Intelligence readers: &ldquo;No.
&ldquo;The drivers of higher gold prices include net buying by central banks, flat mining output, buying as an alternative to U.S. Treasuries since the U.S. is now stealing Treasury securities from lawful holders such as Russia, the fact that Russia has survived economic sanctions because over 25% of its reserves were held in the form of physical gold and the use of gold by BRICS members as an alternative to the dollar.&rdquo;
That&rsquo;s a mouthful &mdash; but it gives you the rough idea that the rally is nowhere near over.
&ldquo;The retail frenzy stage has not yet started but that&rsquo;s coming,&rdquo; says Jim, who still anticipates gold will reach $10,000 before it&rsquo;s all over. Maybe even before year-end 2026.
In the meantime, congratulations are in order for Strategic Intelligence subscribers who bagged a 460% gain on Hecla Mining after a hold time of only seven months. &ldquo;Hard-to-believe gains!&rdquo; a happy reader wrote to the 5 Bullets inbox.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> In the near term, gold&rsquo;s strength over the last year is largely a function of dollar weakness.
The U.S. dollar index &mdash; which measures the greenback against a basket of a half-dozen developed-market currencies &mdash; is down 10% since early 2025. In the world of currencies, that&rsquo;s an earthquake.
And the trend is continuing today amid rumors that Washington will coordinate some sort of action with the Japanese government to support the yen.
It&rsquo;s the Trump administration&rsquo;s policy to weaken the dollar this way. &ldquo;When a government is incentivized to cheapen its currency to monetize its debt, it's madness for investors to fight that policy,&rdquo; Sean Ring writes in today&rsquo;s Rude Awakening. 
&ldquo;Going with the flow is the easiest money you&rsquo;ll ever make.&rdquo;
Which means metals and miners. &ldquo;Gold and silver will continue to rise, maybe with a bump or two along the way,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;And while the miners have performed, they&rsquo;re still priced as if gold is trading at $3,500 and silver is at $40.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Inflation Flashbacks: Is It the &rsquo;70s Again?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> If history rhymes, the big spike of inflation in 2022 is only a preview of coming attractions.
From our trading pro Enrique Abeyta: &ldquo;Fascinating chart from Bank of America comparing the year-over-year increase in inflation from the 1970s to the most recent period starting in 2018&hellip;&rdquo;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1bq58gvGKH3r4KhYcpMOfN/039e01a87937d234a872a22f6a70eda3/FMF-Issue-01-26-26_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
We caution that &ldquo;analog&rdquo; charts like these are compelling &mdash; but not predictive by definition.
&ldquo;No reason inflation will necessarily follow through and track like it has&hellip; but kind of scary,&rdquo; Enrique allows.
This much is certain: Inflation is proving to be &ldquo;sticky&rdquo; going by the Federal Reserve&rsquo;s preferred gauge, a measure called core PCE. Last week the Commerce Department reported that year-over-year core PCE edged up from 2.7% in October to 2.8% in November.
As we can&rsquo;t remind you often enough&hellip; once the inflation rate sails past 5% as it did in 2022, <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/declare-your-independence-from-inflation">it takes a decade on average</a> to get back to &ldquo;normal&rdquo; 2% levels.
[Editor&rsquo;s note: Enrique shared this chart on the Daily Feed section of the Paradigm Press mobile app &mdash; a place where our editors deliver hot takes on the economy and the markets you won&rsquo;t find anywhere else. It&rsquo;s also an easy way to track your buy and sell alerts without sifting through your email. <a href="https://d2z65klgtz99km.cloudfront.net/PPG-App/">Download here</a>.]
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> As earnings season moves into high gear, the major U.S. stock market indexes are starting the week in the green.
Several of the &ldquo;Magnificent 7&rdquo; companies report their numbers this week as well as a slew of financial, industrial and energy names.
But that&rsquo;s not till Wednesday. For the moment, the S&amp;P 500 is up a half percent on the day to 6,951. The Nasdaq&rsquo;s gain is stronger, the Dow&rsquo;s weaker.
Elsewhere, crypto continues to hurt, Bitcoin at $87,307 and Ethereum just under $3,000. &ldquo;Until crypto can string together some winning sessions, it&rsquo;s looking like lower for longer will be the story,&rdquo; writes Greg Guenthner at The Trading Desk.
Crude has pulled back slightly to $60.61. Traders bid up oil late last week because they didn&rsquo;t want to be &ldquo;short&rdquo; going into a weekend when there was the possibility of a new U.S. attack on Iran. But that didn&rsquo;t come to pass, so now oil is selling off.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> In contrast, electricity prices are surging in areas affected by the big winter storm. 
&ldquo;Real-time wholesale electricity prices &zwj;topped $1,800 per MWh early Sunday &zwj;in Dominion Energy&rsquo;s &zwj;Virginia territory,&rdquo; reports CNBC &mdash; &ldquo;up from $200 per MWh on Saturday morning. Virginia houses the largest cluster of data centers in the world.&rdquo;
The regional grid operator PJM expects record wintertime demand tomorrow as the storm is followed by a cold snap. With that in mind, PJM &ldquo;is pushing power plants to secure natural gas supplies through the week,&rdquo; reports Bloomberg.
Specifically PJM &ldquo;is taking a rare step of committing to buy power from generators through 10 a.m. on Jan. 31, as opposed to its typical method of making day-ahead purchases.&rdquo;
As such, PJM anticipates it will be able to avert rolling blackouts.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />The &ldquo;New and Improved&rdquo; TikTok
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> TikTok is now under U.S. control &mdash; and users are noticing. They&rsquo;re not happy.
The long-anticipated sale was consummated last Thursday, China-based ByteDance retaining 19.9% ownership.
The new arrangement complies with a 2024 law that ordered TikTok to shut down unless ByteDance sold. The other 80.1% will be owned by a group of investors including Oracle and the Emirati investment firm MGX.
No sooner did the deal close than TikTok &ldquo;made changes to its privacy policy that include expanding the type of location data the company can collect from its 200 million American users,&rdquo; reports the BBC.
&ldquo;The new joint venture said in its updated privacy terms that it may now &lsquo;collect precise location data, depending on your settings&rsquo; - a change from the previous policy which allowed for the collection of &lsquo;approximate&rsquo; location data.&rdquo;
And there&rsquo;s more, as shown in this screenshot making the rounds on other social media platforms&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5FChLvqLVXxHqgb7oRnn4e/dde4570edd78a5bb925e0d17a496ac8c/FMF-Issue-01-26-26_4_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Beyond the terms of service, the user experience is also changing in a big way.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7sZdaYY9kZ0d7GT79VUClL/cf4317f78c6c0fba750f01aed466269a/FMF-Issue-01-26-26_5_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
To be clear, he&rsquo;s talking about the &ldquo;For You&rdquo; tab. News is still available if that&rsquo;s what you want &mdash; but you have to search for a specific topic.
Love it. The whole rationale in Congress for lowering the boom on TikTok was that the Chinese government was spying on and propagandizing TikTok&rsquo;s U.S. users. (There was never any evidence to support that claim.)
But now that Oracle&rsquo;s Larry Ellison is large and in charge, it&rsquo;s just peachy keen to hoover up location data and anything users disclose about, say, their mental health &mdash; while at the same time suppressing vigorous dialogue about the issues of the day.
Reminder: Ellison <a href="https://x.com/jimstewartson/status/2002457225726759218">can&rsquo;t wait</a> for the arrival of a surveillance state where &ldquo;citizens will be on their best behavior because we&rsquo;re constantly recording everything that&rsquo;s going on.&rdquo;
<ul>
<li>Still unclear is whether this change to the algorithm is slamming <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/small-business-under-threat-again">small businesses</a> that rely on TikTok to sell their wares. (If you&rsquo;re a small-business owner with any insight, please write: <a href="mailto:feedback@paradigmpressroom.com">feedback@paradigmpressroom.com</a>)</li>
</ul>
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Gratitude
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> From the mailbag comes this item submitted by a reader who joined Paradigm last August at the time of our All-In Summit. Presumably he&rsquo;s faring handsomely from the editors&rsquo; USAR recommendation&hellip;
&ldquo;Hi Dave and Emily &mdash; I just retired last year and with that I took over my wife's and my portfolio to try and make sure that we have enough to get by. In doing so, we stumbled on Paradigm through a circuitous route. I don't normally reach out like this, but with the storm coming, I feel uncommonly grateful this morning.
&ldquo;Grateful that we have a home, a full tank of oil, some really good friends we could lean on if things got tough, some amazingly beautiful human beings as adult children and even enough food.
&ldquo;With that being said, I wanted to let you both know that in these CRAZY times, I appreciate your thoughtful, well-written articles. I know you get pushback from some people (refer to: CRAZY times), but I wanted to let you know that I'm a fan. Keep up the good work.&rdquo;
Dave responds: Emily and I are blown away by your kindness. Thank you. (And stay warm wherever you are.)
Like any business, we have certain metrics that we follow and numerical goals we aim to meet. But a note like yours reminds us that as long as we empower satisfied customers like you&hellip; the numbers will take care of themselves.

FMF-Issue-01-26-26(Featured)

Forecast Fulfilled (USAR)

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />The Price Cap Trap
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />President Trump has a knack for putting his finger on real pain points &mdash; and then setting off alarms across the financial system. His latest idea does both. 
More than a week ago, Trump called for a one-year cap on credit-card interest rates at 10%, starting today, Jan. 20.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6vzZOTRJVj17RQLmuKnuMh/d7a6063cd803342f68454dab64cb9f58/FMF-Issue-01-20-26_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
(As of now, the 10% cap remains a proposal and political initiative &mdash; not a binding policy or law.)
The idea seems straightforward: With Americans squeezed by high borrowing costs, Washington should step in and force relief. With many credit cards charging interest rates well above 20%, the proposal hits a cost-of-living nerve.
For its part, the banking industry responded immediately &mdash; and forcefully.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Financial institutions warn that a hard cap would not simply lower rates. It would dramatically shrink access to credit.
The Electronic Payments Coalition (EPC), which represents banks and payment networks, says that under a 10% cap, credit cards would become economically unviable for most borrowers outside the top tier.
According to the group's analysis, accounts tied to credit scores below 740 &mdash; around 82&ndash;88% of all open credit-card accounts &mdash; would likely be closed or severely restricted.
&ldquo;A one-size-fits-all government price cap may sound appealing,&rdquo; EPC Executive Chairman Richard Hunt says, &ldquo;but it wouldn't help Americans &mdash; it would do the exact opposite, harming families, limiting opportunity and weakening our economy.&rdquo;
That claim sounds self-serving, but the mechanics behind it are real.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Credit cards are unsecured loans. There's no collateral backing them.
The interest rate compensates lenders for default risk, fraud and the reality that many cardholders revolve balances for long periods while making only minimum payments.
Credit card APRs hit 25.2% in 2024 &mdash; the highest since 2015, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And more cardholders are making only minimum payments, a sign that households are stretched thin and lenders are getting nervous.
Trump's argument is that a rate cap would reverse that dynamic &mdash; lowering costs for consumers, boosting spending and improving affordability.
But Paradigm's macro expert Jim Rickards says history offers a blunt warning.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;In 1980, during the last year of Jimmy Carter's presidency, inflation and interest rates seemed out of control,&rdquo; Jim explains.
&ldquo;Inflation had been building since the late 1960s, but in 1980 it reached 13.5%&hellip; Interest rates reached an almost record high of 20%.
&ldquo;On March 14, 1980, seven months before the election, Carter announced the authorization of credit controls,&rdquo; Jim says.
The theory was simple: restrict borrowing, cool demand, bring inflation down. The result was the opposite.
&ldquo;The policy was a complete economic failure,&rdquo; Jim notes. &ldquo;New credit card issuance stopped, and credit lines were capped.&rdquo;
The economic fallout was swift. GDP plunged 8.5% in three months. Unemployment spiked from 6.2% to 7.8% by May.
By mid-1980, the controls were lifted. But the damage was done. A recession was already underway, and Carter went on to lose the November election in a landslide.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Donald Trump is now using a similar tactic to fight the 'affordability crisis' and to tame inflation,&rdquo; Jim continues.
&ldquo;That's not how credit works. The banks will simply cut off creditors, reduce credit lines and stop issuing new cards to consumers with lower credit ratings.&rdquo;
That outcome is exactly what lenders are signaling today.
A study from Vanderbilt University's Policy Accelerator, meanwhile, estimates that a 10% cap could save Americans roughly $100 billion annually in interest costs.
&ldquo;The profit margins are absolutely massive,&rdquo; argues Vanderbilt's Brian Shearer, director of competition and regulatory policy. &ldquo;There really is some fat to cut.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Credit card rates are predatory. And price controls backfire. Both things can be true at once. 
The question isn't whether Americans are getting squeezed; they are. It's whether Trump's solution makes things worse.
The affordability crisis is real. The risk is that a policy designed to ease it ends up tightening credit, slowing spending and recreating the very economic stress it aims to relieve &mdash; just as it did more than four decades ago.
Jim concludes: &ldquo;If Trump's idea goes through, put on your crash helmet because the economy will head down fast.&rdquo;
The question now is whether Washington is about to make the same mistake twice, and whether voters will remember who was at the wheel when the economy stalls.
[Today marks one year since Trump&rsquo;s inauguration.
If you were keeping a personal scorecard &mdash; wins and losses, promises kept and broken &mdash; are you better off today than you were a year ago?
Financially, professionally or in terms of opportunity: What&rsquo;s changed for you? <a href="mailto:feedback@paradigmpressroom.com">Hit reply</a> and tell us where you stand. We&rsquo;ll publish feedback throughout the week.]
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />The Big MAC Trade
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The market already has a name for what&rsquo;s unfolding in Washington. As our pro trader Enrique Abeyta explains, economist Claudia Sahm has dubbed it the &ldquo;Big MAC Trade&rdquo; &mdash; a recognition that midterms are coming.
&ldquo;With each new week, we seem to get another policy announcement aimed at affordability to win over voters,&rdquo; Enrique adds. The goal is straightforward: &ldquo;The Trump administration has one objective for the year, and that&rsquo;s winning the midterm elections.&rdquo;
Seen through that lens: &ldquo;A one-year cap on credit-card interest rates makes little sense as serious economic reform,&rdquo; Enrique argues. &ldquo;If such a cap were truly beneficial and sustainable, it wouldn&rsquo;t be temporary.
&ldquo;The one-year duration lines up neatly with the election calendar, not with economic logic.&rdquo;
But markets didn&rsquo;t wait to parse those nuances. &ldquo;Stocks of global payment and credit giants like Visa sold off sharply as investors rushed to price in worst-case scenarios.&rdquo; In hours, a proposal with no legislative footing translated into billions in erased market value.
This is when experience matters.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Markets don&rsquo;t wait for legislation to pass. They trade expectations, probabilities and fear,&rdquo; Enrique reminds readers. Election-year politics, in particular, tend to amplify that behavior.
For investors, the Big MAC Trade isn&rsquo;t about dismissing risk &mdash; it&rsquo;s about properly sizing it. &ldquo;Understanding the political motivation behind it helps investors assess whether a sell-off reflects real long-term risk or temporary uncertainty.&rdquo;
As midterms approach, Enrique expects affordability headlines &mdash; and volatility &mdash; to keep coming. That creates opportunity for those willing to look past the headlines and focus on fundamentals.
&ldquo;Election-year politics may be noisy,&rdquo; Enrique concludes. &ldquo;But noise creates movement, and movement creates opportunity.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />And just like that, stocks are in free fall today. According to financial media outlets, Trump&rsquo;s Greenland and fresh tariff threats are culprits for the sell-off.
Regardless, the tech-heavy Nasdaq is down 1.60% to 23,133 and the S&amp;P 500 and Dow are down 90 and 590 points to 6,840 and 48,765 respectively.
Predictably, commodities are climbing. Oil&rsquo;s up 2% to $60.62 for a barrel of WTI. And precious metals are shining: Gold&rsquo;s up 3.50% to $4,758.50 per ounce; silver, meanwhile, is up 6.30% to $94.10.
<a id="3"></a>
Crypto, however, is not the safety play today. Bitcoin&rsquo;s down 3.30%, just around $90K. And Ethereum&rsquo;s lost a punishing 7%, just under $3K.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" /> Fed Foibles Push China Away?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />China continues to pull back from U.S. government debt &mdash; and the move reflects more than routine portfolio adjustments.
According to U.S. Treasury Department data released this week, China reduced its holdings of U.S. Treasuries to $682.6 billion in November, down from $688.7 billion in October. That marks the lowest level since September 2008, at the height of the global financial crisis.
Measured against January 2025, China&rsquo;s U.S. Treasury holdings are now nearly 10% lower, according to calculations by financial data provider Wind.
The decline is the latest step in a long, uneven retreat that began during Donald Trump&rsquo;s first term. In March, notably, China slipped to third place among foreign holders of U.S. Treasuries, behind Japan and the U.K.
Shao Yu, chief economist at Fudan University, argues that China increasingly views the structure of U.S. borrowing itself as unsustainable. &ldquo;The massive accumulation of [U.S.] debt resembles a Ponzi scheme, where larger volumes of new debt are used to replace the old,&rdquo; Shao says.
&ldquo;China doesn&rsquo;t want to play this game anymore.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />China&rsquo;s skepticism has been reinforced by growing uncertainty around U.S. monetary policy, according to an article at the South China Morning Post. 
The supposed independence of the Federal Reserve has been openly questioned during Trump&rsquo;s presidency with tensions escalating with Fed Chair Jerome Powell&rsquo;s revelation that the administration launched a criminal investigation into him.
Powell believes the probe stems from his refusal to set interest rates in line with the president&rsquo;s preferences; Trump denies any knowledge of the investigation. Whatever the case may be, Powell&rsquo;s chairmanship expires in May.
Shao expects that uncertainty to shape Beijing&rsquo;s decisions going forward. &ldquo;[Trump&rsquo;s] appointee will undoubtedly be more compliant,&rdquo; he says.
&ldquo;This implies that, in line with Trump&rsquo;s directives, there may be a push for rapid interest rate cuts and the initiation of large-scale quantitative easing to support infrastructure, including the artificial intelligence bubble.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Rather than exiting global markets altogether, China appears to be rebalancing its reserves. Beijing is shifting assets toward gold, non-U.S. currencies and overseas equity investments.
China added 30,000 ounces of gold in December, extending its buying streak to 14 consecutive months and bringing total reserves to 74.15 million ounces, according to official figures.
It&rsquo;s also worth mentioning that China&rsquo;s pullback stands in sharp contrast to the behavior of other major investors.
Total foreign holdings of U.S. Treasuries rose to a record $9.36 trillion in November, up from $9.24 trillion in October. Japan and the United Kingdom &mdash; the two largest foreign holders &mdash; both increased their positions, as did Belgium and Canada.
While global investors still see U.S. debt as indispensable, Beijing is no longer willing to anchor its reserves to a system it increasingly views as politically unstable and fiscally unsustainable.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Friday Follow-up: Silver
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />When silver moves faster than the U.S. Mint&rsquo;s pricing software, you&rsquo;re no longer in a normal market. This wasn&rsquo;t just <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/teslas-loss-your-gain#4">a website glitch.</a> It was a market shock catching the government flat-footed.
When the Mint did come back online at <a href="https://www.usmint.gov/coins/silver-coins/?start=0&amp;sz=28">sharply higher premiums&hellip;</a>
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4wXDZqtNWk44TF6BLqU1AD/f3db459921a3124fd71f29e0a535030d/FMF-Issue-01-20-26_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
&hellip; that&rsquo;s your confirmation that physical demand has pulled retail pricing out of sync.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />O&rsquo;Hare Tests Limits of Naming Rights
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Chicago officials are floating the idea of selling naming rights across O&rsquo;Hare airport &mdash; not just to terminals or concourses. Restrooms. Pet relief areas. Elevators. EV chargers. Trash cans. If it exists within the airport ecosystem, it&rsquo;s apparently brandable.
And O&rsquo;Hare needs new satellite concourses and a rebuilt global terminal, but public infrastructure costs real money. If a company &mdash; or individual &mdash; wants to slap its name on a water fountain to help pay for it, why not?
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/71a8sptyCJvV2LTuXtKEeJ/677318b1acf675b85d01545ba1a59b9e/FMF-Issue-01-20-26_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
This is Chicago, after all. The same city where the Chicago Bears are flirting with a stadium relocation &mdash; to Indiana &mdash; for tax reasons.
When your 100-plus year old football team is considering crossing state lines to dodge levies, it&rsquo;s not shocking that your airport is wondering whether Gate B12 could pick up a corporate sponsor.
Of course, there are still many questions about how this all plays out in practice. And while it may raise revenue, it also sends a message. And not necessarily one the city intends.
Still, if Chicago is going down this road, it might as well lean in. Just don&rsquo;t be surprised if the loudest applause ends up going to whoever sponsors the trash cans &mdash; the only thing at O&rsquo;Hare that predictably handles volume. 
Speaking from personal experience, O&rsquo;Hare already owns the record for the longest layover of my life.
You all take care! We&rsquo;ll be back tomorrow&hellip;

FMF-Issue-01-20-26(Featured)

The Price Cap Trap

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Tesla&rsquo;s Loss, Your Gain
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> It might come as a surprise to most Americans&hellip; but global registrations for electric vehicles swelled by 20% last year, according to new figures from the consulting firm Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.
EVs!? Who cares about those anymore?
To be sure, EVs have lost their cachet in the U.S. market. Sales flatlined in 2025. At year&rsquo;s end, Ford wrote down a $19.5 billion investment in EVs. General Motors, for its part, took a $6 billion hit. Tesla&rsquo;s domestic sales peaked in 2023.
<ul>
<li>In retrospect, the turning point for EVs in this country came right around this time in 2024: It was a huge news story when legions of Tesla owners in Chicago found themselves stranded and/or unable to charge their vehicles. Turns out batteries and chargers don&rsquo;t work very well during a cold snap. And it wasn&rsquo;t even that cold in the scheme of things &mdash; about 10 above.</li>
</ul>
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> In the rest of the world, however, EVs are still hot and happening &mdash; and there&rsquo;s a lucrative investment angle that&rsquo;s not obvious on the surface.
&ldquo;Analysts from both the International Energy Agency and BloombergNEF estimate that EV sales will make up 40&ndash;50% of all vehicle sales by 2030,&rdquo; says Paradigm&rsquo;s newest contributor &mdash; natural resources pro Matt Badiali. &ldquo;This industry is booming.&rdquo;
Which means battery metals are likewise booming. &ldquo;The supply/demand outlook for those metals remains strong.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;But one metal stands out as the biggest winner for investors,&rdquo; Matt tells us &mdash; &ldquo;copper.
&ldquo;Copper is the metal of electricity. Aluminum can substitute for it in some situations (like power lines). But if you want an electric motor, you have to use copper. And every EV needs electric motors.
&ldquo;In 2015, EV copper demand was 56,000 metric tons. It grew 1,650% to 1 million metric tons in 2025. That demand growth drove copper prices higher.&rdquo;
Check out this chart of the copper price going back 10 years. This week the red metal crossed over a record $6 a pound&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4VjzK3vBP2BpWoOD8YHGfF/f2fd97e04fbafa42a51877cf0d97fc07/5Bullets_ChartTemplate_0116.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Don&rsquo;t get the wrong idea: &ldquo;This trend will continue for the next five years, at least,&rdquo; Matt says.
&ldquo;The Copper Development Association forecasts copper demand for EVs to hit 2.5 million metric tons by 2030. Analysts at JP Morgan expect a deficit of 330,000 metric tons in 2026.
&ldquo;This trend will get a further boost by demand from AI datacenters. The sudden boom in electricity and batteries will further impact copper prices. There is no substitute for copper in many electrical uses.&rdquo;
As we mentioned only yesterday, Amazon has signed a deal with Rio Tinto for exclusive access to the copper coming from a mine in Arizona that came into operation last year. It&rsquo;s the first such deal &mdash; but it won&rsquo;t be the last.
How to play the trend? Matt likes the Global X Copper Miners ETF (COPX).
&ldquo;Owning a basket of these miners reduces common risks from individual companies,&rdquo; he says.
&ldquo;For most portfolios, a position in COPX is the perfect exposure to the copper market.&rdquo; [Dave&rsquo;s disclosure: I&rsquo;ve been steadily building a position in COPX since 2021.]
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Not Just Tech Anymore
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> It&rsquo;s no longer technology pulling the stock market train here in early 2026.
On the Daily Feed section of the Paradigm Press mobile app, trading pro Enrique Abeyta draws our attention to an intriguing stat from Turning Point Market Research.
Every one of the S&amp;P 500&rsquo;s 11 sectors now sits above its 200-day moving average. That&rsquo;s everything from information technology to financials to utilities.
&ldquo;Since 1928,&rdquo; Enrique says, &ldquo;the S&amp;P 500 has delivered an annualized return of 11.5% once this happens.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Another tailwind for stocks &mdash; a peaceful bond market.
Just as the VIX measures volatility in stocks, the MOVE index measures volatility in bonds. The MOVE index has been falling steadily ever since the &ldquo;Liberation Day&rdquo; scare last April.
Key point: &ldquo;When the MOVE index is high (or going higher), stocks struggle,&rdquo; Enrique says. &ldquo;When it collapses, stocks &mdash; especially small stocks &mdash; can soar.&rdquo;
The MOVE now sits at lows last seen in 2021. &ldquo;Bullish for small caps across the board.&rdquo;
Intriguing, no?
This is your friendly reminder that the Paradigm Press mobile app delivers access to market insights like these that you won&rsquo;t find anywhere else. Better yet, it gives you clean, easy-to-navigate access to all of your paid publications without sifting through a cluttered email inbox. <a href="https://d2z65klgtz99km.cloudfront.net/PPG-App/">Download the app right here and see for yourself</a>.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> As the week winds down, watching the major U.S. stock indexes is like watching paint dry.
None of the averages has budged more than a tenth of a percent as we write. At 6,949 the S&amp;P 500 rests about 28 points below Monday&rsquo;s record close.
Gold has slipped below $4,600 for the moment and silver is getting a much-needed reset &mdash; down $3.62 at last check to $88.73. (More about silver momentarily&hellip;)
Not much change in crypto compared with 24 hours ago &mdash; Bitcoin just under $95,000 and Ethereum below $3,300.
The lone economic number of interest today is industrial production &mdash; up 0.4% in December, according to the Federal Reserve. All told, 76.3% of America&rsquo;s industrial capacity was in use last month &mdash; slightly better than a year earlier, but well below the long-term average.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" /> Wars and Rumors of Wars
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Oil prices are back on the rise as new rumors swirl about a U.S. attack on Iran.
When we left you yesterday, it seemed as if Donald Trump was satisfied that Iran&rsquo;s crackdown on protesters was over and he was not inclined to launch a follow-up attack to the one he launched last summer. The oil price tumbled over 4% as a consequence.
Rumors abounded that an attack was imminent on Wednesday night. The much-followed &ldquo;OSINTdefender&rdquo; account on X claimed there were possible explosions in Tehran &mdash; and then the post was deleted because &ldquo;the source appear to be a bit flimsy [sic].&rdquo;
It&rsquo;s possible an attack was called off at the last minute, for reasons still unknown.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2V384y342ARlUvejFQaRoY/a4e01c12ecd6518ceefc569962401391/FMF-Issue-01-16-26_2_.jpg" alt="pub" width="540px" />
But as our favorite political reporter Michael Tracey reminds us, Trump pulled a feint just before last summer&rsquo;s airstrikes&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1Tn9begpgBTNOT01VsnSWT/df9dbc7908bbb09e41f5cc18879daac3/FMF-Issue-01-16-26_3_.jpg" alt="pub" width="540px" />
<a id="4"></a>
Amid that backdrop, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate is up over 1% on the day &mdash; back within 15 cents of $60.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Discounted Silver! (For a Few Seconds&hellip;)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The action in silver this week is so wild that for a brief time, the U.S. Mint was selling it at a discount.
On Wednesday, the spot price of silver sailed toward $93 an ounce &mdash; which was problematic because the Mint was charging $91 for uncirculated U.S. Silver Eagles.
Evidently the Mint is such a slow-moving beast that rather than adjust the price higher, it simply pulled its silver offerings off its website.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5GmWzpW9XuQEkT45JPqWgG/14048555a5a53ba642679aee28e682fb/FMF-Issue-01-16-26_4_.jpg" alt="pub" width="313px" />
&ldquo;Due to rapidly rising metal costs, silver numismatic (collectible) products have been temporarily removed from sale as we evaluate pricing across our entire numismatic portfolio,&rdquo; a notice explains.
&ldquo;Products will be placed back on sale as soon as prices are adjusted. American Eagle Silver bullion coins remain available for purchase through our network of authorized purchasers.&rdquo;
Is it that hard to adjust the prices on the website? Or has the Mint&rsquo;s inventory been cleaned out?
&ldquo;The U.S. Mint has suspended silver sales before, but those suspensions were attributed to inventory shortages and supply chain disruptions, not to rising bullion prices,&rdquo; writes one Stuart Englert on his Substack page.
&ldquo;Between 2008 and 2010, extreme demand forced the U.S. Mint to ration and temporarily suspended sales of American Silver Eagles several times due to a shortage of blanks to make the bullion coins. At the time, some industry observers attributed the shortages to kinks in the supply chain or a manufacturing bottleneck.&rdquo;
Ditto in 2020 amid the pandemic disruptions.
Silver Eagles are still available at most online dealers at the usual markup. Nothing at Costco, though&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />You&rsquo;ve Got to Be Kidding&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Apparently this is how management at CBS News thinks they can revive their brand&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/zj4n4wCI6PCzDYiuKM8pQ/5d195ec3dd701e4edb67d8494761eebc/FMF-Issue-01-16-26_5_.jpg" alt="pub" width="540px" /> <img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4NsFLVUicCvDuXZwxKhd8n/5463d365c46be62c8fd7f65bcd275e6d/FMF-Issue-01-16-26_6_.jpg" alt="pub" width="540px" /> What were they thinking!? [CBS mockups posted by Zeteo News]
So we should back up a bit: Last year, CBS parent Paramount came under the control of nepo-baby David Ellison, son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison. The younger Ellison hired free-speech hypocrite Bari Weiss to try to make CBS News relevant again.
So far, it&rsquo;s not working.
For instance, Weiss&rsquo; interview with Charlie Kirk&rsquo;s widow Erika last month garnered a measly 72,000 views on YouTube after two days. On TV, viewership totaled about 1.5 million &mdash; a fraction of the audience that watched the Army-Navy football game beforehand.
Meanwhile, viewership of the CBS Evening News under Weiss-appointed anchor Tony Dokoupil is down 23% compared with already-pitiful levels a year ago &mdash; when Norah <a href="https://5minforecast.com/2019/07/11/noron-earns-her-big-reward-what-about-you/">&ldquo;Noron&rdquo;</a> O&rsquo;Donnell was still at the desk.
<ul>
<li>Sidebar: As you might know, your editor worked 20 years in broadcast news until walking away from the racket in 2007. The trade has become so irrelevant, so inconsequential to public discourse, that I&rsquo;d never even heard of Tony Dokoupil until maybe 18 months ago.</li>
</ul>
And so Weiss or one of her minions thought it would be a good idea to spice up the network&rsquo;s flagship newscast with a segment called &ldquo;Whiskey Fridays With Tony Dokoupil.&rdquo;
"Some staff were only first made aware of it as they encountered CBS testing set designs of a faux-stocked bar in the newsroom, featuring a large sponsor banner for Jack Daniel&rsquo;s," tweets reporter Prem Thakker of the Zeteo News site.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The humiliation was such that CBS went into instant damage-control mode: It&rsquo;s just a concept!
"This is not a segment for broadcast. This is not a real title. This is not a real sponsor. And this is not a real story,&rdquo; says a CBS statement to People magazine. &ldquo;This is simply an experimental mockup the graphics team created with placeholder text for a potential non-televised, in-person private event.&rdquo;
Uh-huh.
Having been unwittingly dragged into the fray, Jack Daniel&rsquo;s parent Brown-Forman had to issue its own statement: &ldquo;Jack Daniel&rsquo;s is not involved in any such segment, nor do we have any awareness of the segment and any potential partnerships or sponsorships.&rdquo;
As one wag on X put it, &ldquo;Amazing that even Jack Daniel&rsquo;s was like, &lsquo;Do not involve us in this dork s***.&rsquo;&rdquo;
The fiasco is especially amusing to us here at Paradigm &mdash; where for 20 years we&rsquo;ve conducted rollicking panel discussions under the name &ldquo;Whiskey Bar,&rdquo; both at in-person conferences and online.
And they&rsquo;ve gone over with audiences way better than anything out of CBS News lately&hellip;

FMF-Issue-01-16-26(Featured)

Tesla’s Loss, Your Gain

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />After 25 Years of Locked Doors, A Door Opens
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Sorry if the last three days of these 5 Bullets have been a downer &mdash; everything about how the American Dream has been locked away for more and more Americans over the last 25 years and how we got here.
Today we hope to make it up to you.
We&rsquo;re coming to you a bit later than usual because moments ago Jim Rickards wrapped up our exclusive event titled &ldquo;The American Dream Unlocked.&rdquo; <a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2504902">(You can watch the replay right here if you missed it.)</a>
He introduced them to the newest member of the Paradigm team, Matt Badiali &mdash; aka &ldquo;the CEO.&rdquo;
We call him that because he was chief executive officer of a company that made a lot of its shareholders rich last year.
He took his mining company public several years ago. Then last August he brokered a deal to grow his company&rsquo;s operations &mdash; acquiring a firm called Silverco Mining. This deal unlocked a huge 608% peak gain for its shareholders in only two months.
That&rsquo;s only one achievement of many across a 20-plus year career in the mining and energy sector as an executive, analyst and consultant.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Now in 2026, Matt has spotted an opportunity that could be as lucrative as anything that came out of the natural resource boom during the 2000s.
If you don&rsquo;t recall that episode, &ldquo;it was epic,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;I personally know a lot of people who simply retired after that market. They made so much money that they were set for life.&rdquo;
A mere $5,000 grubstake turned into&hellip;
<ul>
<li>$130,000 in less than five years with Southern Copper</li>
<li>$320,000 in about five years with the steelmaker Cleveland-Cliffs</li>
<li>$1.1 million in less than five years with Azimut, a miner of copper, nickel and lithium.</li>
</ul>
Did you miss out on those? Well, Matt sees a similar opportunity shaping up here in the 2020s &mdash; with a little-known federal agency set to make an earthshaking move before the end of the month.
Just one announcement a few days from now could unlock the American Dream for those who are bold enough to act.
&ldquo;I&rsquo;m talking about an unstoppable trend that could be the biggest wealth-creation event of the decade,&rdquo; Matt says.
If your curiosity is piqued, <a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2504902">once more here&rsquo;s Jim Rickards&rsquo; introduction to Matt &mdash; and the replay to our exclusive event, &ldquo;The American Dream Unlocked.&rdquo;</a>
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Gee, It Took Only Two Years
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />We&rsquo;ve been screaming from the rooftops about this story for two years &mdash; and today it finally got to the front page of The Wall Street Journal.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1mTEe7gmPsspavfuMpHxqp/28594d6eaeb2b9a494b09170889fe642/FMF-Issue-01-15-26_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Well, you heard it here first: &ldquo;The rapid growth in internet traffic and cloud computing has led to skyrocketing energy demands for data centers,&rdquo; said our Ray Blanco in this space on Jan. 18, 2024.
By the summer of 2024 we were calling AI &ldquo;the monster that ate the power grid.&rdquo; Last year, we gave you a rare free pick in these virtual pages &mdash; Constellation Energy (CEG) &mdash; which soared 52% in less than six months. Enrique Abeyta&rsquo;s paying subscribers fared even better.
Along the way we also told you about the problems facing the nation&rsquo;s biggest grid operator &mdash; PJM, which serves 67 million people in 13 states from the mid-Atlantic to the Midwest. Its territory includes the biggest concentration of data centers in the world, &ldquo;Data Center Alley&rdquo; in northern Virginia.
Finally the WSJ is perking up: &ldquo;Rates are going up for consumers. Older power plants are going out of service faster than new ones can be built. And the grid&rsquo;s capacity is in danger of maxing out during periods of high demand, which could force PJM to call for rolling blackouts during heat waves or deep freezes to avoid damaging grid infrastructure.&rdquo;
Again, none of this is new if you keep up with these daily missives. We even warned real-time about potential blackouts specific to PJM like a Christmas Eve cold snap in 2022. (Fortunately matters did not reach a crisis level.)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Here is the frustration of the affordability crisis in one chart,&rdquo; says Enrique Abeyta, with a follow-up today.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1ckC3j37idYK4E6mIecORH/c8136f8536114a7f2610e3b8c7044237/5Bullets_Chart_ChangeinElectricityPricesbySector_011526.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
&ldquo;Residential electricity prices have risen almost +10% since 2022,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;while rates for commercial (+3%) and industrial (-2%) have gone up less or even down.&rdquo;
To be sure, not all the blame lies with AI: In some states, &ldquo;green&rdquo; mandates supporting solar and wind have also driven up power prices.
This morning brings news that the data center buildout is affecting sectors other than just technology and electricity: Amazon just signed a two-year deal for access to copper mined at an Arizona site by Rio Tinto. Last year, that mine became the first new source of U.S. copper in more than 10 years &mdash; and now Amazon&rsquo;s got dibs.
Paradigm will continue to stay on top of the story &mdash; and keep you ahead of the mainstream.
[By the way: Enrique first brought that chart to readers&rsquo; attention this morning in the &ldquo;Daily Feed&rdquo; section of the Paradigm Press mobile app.
Only the app gives you access to a host of instant insights &mdash; along with convenient one-stop-shopping for all the buy and sell alerts in your paid publications. (No more sifting through your email!) <a href="https://d2z65klgtz99km.cloudfront.net/PPG-App/">Download here</a>.]
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" /> Oil&hellip; and Iran
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The big market story today is a tumble in the oil price because peace is breaking out again in the Middle East. For the moment. Maybe.
Only two days ago, Donald Trump told anti-government protesters in Iran that &ldquo;help is on the way.&rdquo; Then last night, he seemed to reverse course &mdash; saying he&rsquo;d been told &ldquo;the killing in Iran has stopped.&rdquo;
He didn&rsquo;t say who told him, but traders are taking it as a sign that tensions are easing.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Meanwhile, an eye-opening Washington Post story puts the timeline of the last three weeks in an interesting new light.
&ldquo;Days before protests erupted in Iran in late December, Israeli officials notified the Iranian leadership via Russia that they would not launch strikes against Iran if Israel were not attacked first&hellip;
&ldquo;[T]he contacts reflected Israel&rsquo;s desire to avoid being perceived as escalating tensions toward Iran&hellip;&rdquo;
Hmmm&hellip; The article does not specify exactly when these contacts took place. But consider what else was going on around that time&hellip;
<ul>
<li>Dec. 29: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, urging Trump to attack Iran</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Dec. 29: Israel&rsquo;s overseas intelligence service, the Mossad, posts a message on social media in Iran&rsquo;s Farsi language: &ldquo;Go out together into the streets. The time has come.&rdquo; Mossad said pointedly its agents were already in the streets: &ldquo;We are with you. Not only from a distance and verbally. We are with you in the field&rdquo;</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Jan. 2: Israel&rsquo;s Channel 12 outlet reports that roughly half of politically active accounts on Israeli social media are bots, not real people &mdash; and much of the traffic amplifies messaging from Netanyahu. &ldquo;When he posts a five-minute video in Hebrew, in the first 60 seconds, most of the shares are from abroad, and [those] posts happen within about five seconds,&rdquo; said Jonathan Hasidim of the Scooper research group.</li>
</ul>
So Mossad is ginning up mobs in Iran while social media worldwide is flooded with posts urging Donald Trump &mdash; not Netanyahu &mdash; to attack Iran in defense of the protesters.
Brings to mind the old joke about &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s you and him fight.&rdquo;
But in recent days the anti-government protests have fizzled &mdash; presumably because the regime&rsquo;s opponents want to be seen as Iranian patriots and not tools of Israel and the United States.&nbsp;
And now Trump is signaling no U.S. airstrikes are imminent. Not that the U.S military is in a position to do much anyway: There isn&rsquo;t even a U.S. aircraft carrier in the region right now.
With that, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate is down more than three bucks &mdash; sitting as we write a hair under $59.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Beyond oil, the other big market story is a whipsaw in silver.
The trouble began during electronic trading in New York last night, the price collapsing from over $93 to under $87. Then the white metal started clawing its way back. At last check it&rsquo;s back over $92!
Gold has looked positively calm by comparison &ndash; down modestly but still holding the line on $4,600.
It was a modestly positive day for the major U.S. indexes, the Dow up 0.6%. The S&amp;P and the Nasdaq both ended the day up a quarter percent &ndash; not enough to make up for yesterday&rsquo;s losses.
Crypto is looking stout &ndash; Bitcoin over $95,000 and Ethereum in sight of $3,300.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />&ldquo;Trumpcare for the Oil Industry&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Big Oil is skeptical about big money to be made in Venezuela.
Last Friday, Donald Trump met with a group of oil executives at the White House. He urged them to invest at least $100 billion in rebuilding and building out Venezuela&rsquo;s oil infrastructure.
No one stepped up with an immediate commitment &mdash; even though Venezuela sits on the world&rsquo;s biggest oil reserves and its oil is the kind that&rsquo;s tailor-made for Gulf Coast refineries. Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods called the country &ldquo;uninvestable&rdquo; because there are no &ldquo;legal and commercial frameworks.&rdquo;
Gee, it&rsquo;s almost as if Woods was urging Trump to follow through with full-on regime change; as it happens, Exxon has funded think tanks advocating exactly that.&nbsp;
"I didn't like Exxon's response,&rdquo; Trump said Sunday. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re playing too cute.&rdquo;&nbsp;
Regardless, Exxon&rsquo;s Woods merely said out loud what every other CEO in the room was thinking: What&rsquo;s the point of investing billions when leftist paramilitaries could start blowing up pipelines willy-nilly to deprive the Yanquis of Venezuelan crude?
University of Chicago poli-sci prof Robert Pape might be a little hyperbolic here&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7jnVYE9R3ln8UNNFFjIlRy/4a02e1870a6e96d901cc8fd0fcf26006/FMF-Issue-01-15-26_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
&hellip; but then again, he&rsquo;s the world authority on suicide bombing, so his warnings shouldn&rsquo;t be dismissed out of hand.
Is it any wonder that last week Trump floated the idea of the U.S. taxpayer <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/james-altucher-back-on-the-bitcoin-train">subsidizing</a> Big Oil&rsquo;s investment in Venezuela?&nbsp;
One wag on social media likens the scheme to Obamacare for the health insurers &mdash; &ldquo;Trumpcare for the oil industry.&rdquo;
<ul>
<li>Meanwhile, Chinese firms like CNPC keep a significant presence in Venezuela &mdash; and that hasn&rsquo;t changed even with former President Nicolas Maduro sitting in a New York lockup. For whatever reason, you don&rsquo;t see much about that angle of the story in Western media&hellip;</li>
</ul>
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Affordability and the American Dream
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /><a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-end-of-affordability">Tuesday&rsquo;s edition</a> resonated with readers &mdash; especially the two charts laying bare how the American Dream seems out of reach for so many.
&ldquo;I thought your Jan. 13th 5 Bullets was on point, particularly the way you anchored data to lived experience rather than official narratives. The affordability breakdown you describe is real, persistent and increasingly undeniable.
&ldquo;A challenge I continue to wrestle with regarding economic machinations is whether we sometimes mistake mechanisms for causes. The Fed, subsidies, tariffs and red tape clearly matter; outcomes, however, are remarkably consistent across administrations, parties and policy regimes. The same small group keeps winning, while most Americans keep falling behind.
&ldquo;That persistent result makes me wonder whether the deeper story is less about ideology or incompetence and more about incentive structures and ownership models that quietly shape outcomes regardless of who&rsquo;s &lsquo;in charge.&rsquo; The system keeps performing exactly as designed, despite which actor appears to be steering it.
&ldquo;I often think about this in terms of two money games: a collaborative, value-creating, making game that sustains the real economy and a competitive, zero-sum taking game that overlays and increasingly dominates it. Whether or not it&rsquo;s a frame worth naming, it&rsquo;s one I can&rsquo;t seem to unsee once the patterns are laid side by side.
&ldquo;Always appreciate the clarity of your thinking.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;It seems to me that when you view a number of charts that productivity and affordability have widened the gap since a certain date in 1971,&rdquo; writes another &mdash; &ldquo;when Nixon took us off the gold standard.&nbsp;
&ldquo;Until then, the gap between the two was quite consistent.&nbsp;
&ldquo;I'm no economist, but in viewing some of these charts it was about that time when the gap really began to widen. What is the Paradigm team's thought on this?&rdquo;
Dave responds: Well, we don&rsquo;t all think alike around here, but I think you&rsquo;re onto something &mdash; and so does the operator of <a href="https://wtfhappenedin1971.com">this website</a> &mdash; who we hasten to add has no connection with us.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Good information here, but you missed a big piece of why Americans of median income are struggling with the almighty dollar being so almighty weak today,&rdquo; writes one more.
&ldquo;Check out the Solari report on Substack. $21 trillion missing? My guess is that this would be a huge factor in the overall numbers of everything you include on your charts. $6.5 trillion in 2015 alone...
&ldquo;FRAUD is the biggest problem we have today, and have had for some time. Everyone (or most) in government at every level everywhere is on this gravy train, and it is not going to stop. Another $750 million just took off from Minnesota bound for Somalia yesterday &mdash; all cash in suitcases, and we just seem to let it happen. And Bessent says 10% of all federal money is not accounted for.
&ldquo;So what went wrong?&rdquo;
Dave: I&rsquo;m familiar with the research you reference &mdash; even wrote about it when Catherine Austin Fitts and Michigan State&rsquo;s Mark Skidmore first issued it in 2017. (And I revisited it <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/elon-vs-the-pentagon">last year</a> when the DOGE boys were supposed to be auditing the Pentagon. Remember that?)
To be clear, the $21 trillion in &ldquo;undocumented adjustments&rdquo; at the Pentagon and HUD from 1998&ndash;2015 aren&rsquo;t all fraudulent necessarily. It&rsquo;s just that there&rsquo;s no clear paper trail, such is the sloppy nature of government recordkeeping.
Anyway, I will gently disagree: There will always be &ldquo;waste, fraud and abuse&rdquo; in government. It&rsquo;s just the nature of the beast. The key is to shrink government to a size where the inevitable fraud will be a rounding error!

FMF-Issue-01-15-26(Featured)

After 25 Years of Locked Doors, a Door Opens

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Portfolio&rsquo;s Great. Why Am I So Unhappy?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The story of investing during 2025 can be summed up as the tale of Nvidia and Newmont.
Nvidia was the darling of the tech-adjacent &ldquo;Magnificent 7&rdquo;... the poster child for the AI age&hellip; the object of endless discussion on CNBC and investing message boards.
NVDA began the year around $137 and ended at $187 &mdash; a solid gain of 36.5%, more than double the performance of an S&amp;P 500 index fund.
In contrast, no one talked about Newmont Corp. NEM is the biggest gold-mining company in the world&hellip; but both Newmont and the gold-mining sector as a whole went unloved, overlooked, under the radar.
NEM began the year around $37 and ended just shy of $100 &mdash; a stunning one-year gain of 170%. And almost no one noticed.
I don&rsquo;t even remember when I started investing in the precious metals space in earnest; the easily-accessible records from my brokerage account go back only 10 years. I didn&rsquo;t do anything wild or crazy &mdash; just dollar-cost averaging into the Sprott Physical Gold Trust (PHYS), the Sprott Physical Silver Trust (PSLV) and the Tocqueville Gold Fund of mining stocks (now under the Sprott umbrella trading as SGDLX).
Through all the ups and downs &mdash; gold collapsed from $1,900 in 2011 to $1,050 in 2015 &mdash; I held fast. I had every confidence that the outperformance of precious metals during the 1970s and the 2000s would recur sooner or later.
2025 was the year my patience started to pay off, gold ending the year north of $4,300.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> And I have every confidence the party&rsquo;s just getting started. Which is really depressing to think about.
Yes, depressing. On a profound level, the outperformance of the precious metals sector &mdash; and the boost it&rsquo;s given to my portfolio &mdash; gives me no joy.
The problem is that precious metals &mdash; and the natural resource space as a whole &mdash; usually outperform at a time when the world is going to hell in a handbag.
Think about the Great Depression, when &mdash; as we saw in yesterday&rsquo;s edition &mdash; the term &ldquo;American Dream&rdquo; first came into widespread use.
It was an awful time for both the economy and the stock market. But among the best performing stocks of the 1930s were two gold-mining names &mdash; Homestake Mining and Dome Mines. A dollar invested in Homestake in 1928 would have turned into $1.97 by 1932&hellip; $4.95 by year-end 1933&hellip; and $6.40 by the end of 1934.
The natural-resource sector also thrived during the 1970s &mdash; when inflation was ravaging everyday Americans and the era of post-WWII prosperity ground to a halt. (I recall encountering the term &ldquo;Rust Belt&rdquo; in U.S. News &amp; World Report way back then.)
The gold price zoomed from $35 to over $800&hellip; while individual mining names performed even better. Energy names also thrived during this time.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Like it or not, gold&rsquo;s success these days goes hand-in-hand with an American Dream that seems ever more elusive.
I&rsquo;ve been anticipating something like this for the better part of two decades. It gives me no joy that it&rsquo;s coming to pass.
Gold&rsquo;s rise in the 2020s is a global vote of no-confidence in the U.S. dollar and U.S. Treasury debt.
Uncle Sam is racking up enormous budget deficits relative to the size of the economy. Politicians in decades gone by could justify deficits of that scale during a world war, a global financial crisis or a pandemic. But none of that is happening now.
It&rsquo;s no coincidence gold took off in 2022 when Washington froze the dollar-based assets of Russia&rsquo;s central bank. Governments around the world, wary it could happen to them too, have loaded up on gold as an alternative to dollars and Treasuries.
It&rsquo;s still the early innings. &ldquo;Private institutional investors have gold allocations of below 2.0% of total assets,&rdquo; Paradigm&rsquo;s Jim Rickards reminded us last month.
&ldquo;If that expanded to a mere 4.0% allocation, there&rsquo;s not enough gold in the world at today&rsquo;s prices to fill those orders.&rdquo;
And so it goes with all manner of natural resources &mdash; tangible wealth. Precious metals, base metals, energy, agriculture&hellip;
Yes, the gains to date have been fantastic. But it&rsquo;s still, at the latest, the fourth inning.
Now I&rsquo;ll hand it off to Emily for the rest of today&rsquo;s edition&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />The Powell Panic
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Not all breaking news matters. The latest story about Jerome Powell is a perfect example,&rdquo; says Paradigm&rsquo;s pro trader Enrique Abeyta.
&ldquo;By now, you&rsquo;ve seen the headlines&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7p7pIUO3CNYfimfNJPPuuP/052df3a5371e9c7359a16c474871abdd/FMF-Issue-01-14-26_1_.jpg" alt="pub" width="540px" /> Source: New York Times
&ldquo;Stocks traded lower and risk assets wobbled as commentators speculated whether this is the beginning of some grand unraveling.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;It was simply the opening of an investigation. Yet the market reacted as if the most extreme interpretation were already fact,&rdquo; Enrique points out.
&ldquo;If you zoom out and look at what actually matters right now, the disconnect becomes obvious&hellip;
<ul>
<li>Market strength has been broadening, not narrowing</li>
<li>Leadership is no longer confined to a handful of mega-cap names</li>
<li>Interest rates have been drifting lower, easing financial conditions rather than tightening them</li>
<li>Oil prices are down, which acts as a tax cut for consumers and businesses alike</li>
<li>And corporate earnings growth remains solid, with margins holding up better than most feared just a few quarters ago.</li>
</ul>
&ldquo;Against that backdrop, a knee-jerk sell-off tied to the announcement of an investigation [isn&rsquo;t] just overblown &mdash; it&rsquo;s absurd.
&ldquo;To prove my point, here&rsquo;s a great chart from one of my favorite financial voices, Charlie Bilello from Creative Planning. [It] highlights the market's reaction (or lack thereof) to major historical events:
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7veXqfi4nzR9OnOgEqTipe/e9d74966ff3833407e30ddfac90647e5/FMF-Issue-01-14-26_2_.jpg" alt="pub" width="540px" /> Source: Creative Planning
&ldquo;Even significant events like the 2016 Brexit vote barely registered on S&amp;P total returns,&rdquo; Enrique notes.
&ldquo;If the U.K. leaving the EU after more than four decades barely impacted the S&amp;P 500's trajectory, do you really think this Powell headline will have a lasting impact?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;The Powell story checks every box of a classic &lsquo;BTSD&rsquo; setup,&rdquo; Enrique adds. Unfamiliar with the acronym? Buy the Stupidity Dip&hellip;
&ldquo;None of this means volatility disappears or that you should blindly buy every dip,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Context always matters.
&ldquo;But in situations like these, where the reaction is clearly disconnected from fundamentals, the playbook is straightforward.
&ldquo;Slow down. Filter out the noise. And focus on what actually drives markets,&rdquo; Enrique advises.
&ldquo;BTSD isn&rsquo;t just a slogan; it&rsquo;s a mindset. And on occasions like these, it&rsquo;s how investors make real money.
&ldquo;Over and over again, the market sells first and asks questions later,&rdquo; he concludes. &ldquo;When cooler heads prevail, prices quietly recover.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Stocks are hitting the skids this afternoon. The Nasdaq is getting the worst of it; the tech-heavy index is down 1.45% to 23,365. Faring slightly better, the S&amp;P 500 has lost about 1% market cap to 6,895 while the Dow&rsquo;s down 0.50% to 48,935.
Meanwhile, oil&rsquo;s rebounding, up about 0.85% to $61.68 for a barrel of West Texas crude. But precious metals are in record-breaking territory. Gold&rsquo;s up 0.45% to $4,620.20 per ounce, but it&rsquo;s silver that&rsquo;s stealing all the shine: up 5.15% to $90.74.
Crypto, likewise, is rallying today. Bitcoin&rsquo;s up 3.65%, just under $98K, and Ethereum&rsquo;s up 5.35% to $3,375.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Who Pays for the AI Boom?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Trump is making affordability a frontline issue, now aiming squarely at the soaring energy costs tied to America&rsquo;s AI boom.
On Tuesday, Trump announced his administration is partnering with major tech companies to ensure the massive data centers powering artificial intelligence do not push electricity bills higher for American households.
&ldquo;We are the &lsquo;HOTTEST&rsquo; Country in the World, and Number One in AI,&rdquo; Trump wrote on Truth Social. &ldquo;Data Centers are key to that boom, and keeping Americans FREE and SECURE but, the big Technology Companies who build them must &lsquo;pay their own way.&rsquo;&rdquo;
Data centers, especially those designed for AI workloads, consume enormous amounts of electricity and water. A single large facility can use as much power as a small city and up to a million gallons of water per day. The International Energy Agency estimates that global electricity demand from data centers could double in 2026 &mdash; compared with 2022 levels &mdash; roughly equivalent to the annual electricity use of Japan.
Microsoft president Brad Smith details his company&rsquo;s commitments at a White House-area event titled Community-First AI Infrastructure. Smith says Microsoft would ensure its electricity use does not raise local utility rates and that it would forgo tax breaks or discounted power prices in communities hosting its facilities.
The announcement comes amid bipartisan backlash. Communities in states as politically diverse as Oklahoma, Tennessee, Oregon, California, New York and Wisconsin have raised alarms over higher power bills, water strain and environmental impact. In rural Wisconsin, Microsoft recently scrapped plans for a new data center after residents objected to potential electricity rate increases.
Trump has spent his second term courting tech leaders and deregulating AI development to speed innovation. But as affordability pressures mount, the White House is reassessing &mdash; pressing tech giants to absorb the costs of growth rather than passing them onto already stretched-thin American families.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />WFH = City Budget Crisis
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> America&rsquo;s remote-work experiment is no longer reshaping office culture &mdash; it&rsquo;s reshaping city balance sheets.
In a recent Demography Unplugged analysis, demographer Neil Howe and Christian Ford argue that the work-from-home shift has moved beyond workplace policy and into the realm of municipal economics.
While many white-collar employees now split time between home and office, a notable segment remains fully remote. Across U.S. metro areas with populations over 1 million, about 15% of workers now telecommute every day, with even higher concentrations in cities including Austin, Raleigh, Denver and Portland.
Notably, these workers haven&rsquo;t fled urban life altogether. They still live near restaurants, culture and amenities &mdash; but they no longer anchor downtown business districts with daily commutes. As Howe and Ford note: &ldquo;The economic impact on city centers is becoming increasingly hard to ignore.&rdquo;
The most obvious pain point is office real estate. In Austin and Denver, for instance, more than a quarter of office space now sits vacant, the highest share among major metros.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/J1XHhJ9PGUjzbDOBlmKwu/c4225db91925393397ad9975feae1b76/FMF-Issue-01-14-26_3_.jpg" alt="pub" width="540px" /> Source: Moody&rsquo;s, Demography Unplugged
Those vacancies ripple outward. In San Francisco, the collapse in office demand is expected to reduce property-tax revenue between $150&ndash;200 million per year from 2023&ndash;2028.
Housing markets are also adjusting. According to Parcl Labs, more than half of homes currently listed in Austin and Denver have already reduced their initial asking prices. In Austin alone, residential property values are projected to fall by 10% in 2026 &mdash; a sign that demand has softened, compounded by higher interest rates.
City governments are now responding with austerity. Denver has eliminated city positions equal to 7.6% of its workforce. Austin has scaled back funding for emergency medical services and public parks. San Francisco&rsquo;s mayor has instructed departments to identify $400 million in budget cuts for 2026.
&ldquo;Remote work is no longer just a fight between workers and bosses,&rdquo; say Howe and Ford. It has become a stress test for urban centers &mdash; one that forces cities to shrink and rethink what a downtown economy looks like when fewer people show up for work each morning.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Proof of Life: An App for That
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The hottest new app in China does almost nothing&hellip; And that&rsquo;s precisely the point.
It&rsquo;s called Si Le Ma, which roughly translates to &ldquo;Are You Dead Yet?&rdquo; Once a day, users tap a single oversized green button. Miss two days in a row, and the app automatically emails a designated emergency contact, urging them to physically check on you.
Just basic proof of life.
&ldquo;When I looked at Maslow&rsquo;s hierarchy of needs, I saw that safety needs are deeper and apply to a much broader group of people. That felt like a good direction,&rdquo; says the app&rsquo;s Gen-Z developer Guo.
Guo and his team originally charged 1 RMB (about $0.14) for lifetime access, later raising it to 8 RMB (roughly $1.15). The app reportedly cost around $200 to build.
But the concept &mdash; part utilitarian, part gallows humor &mdash; hit hard, making Are You Dead Yet? the No. 1 paid app on China&rsquo;s Apple App Store while climbing overseas rankings without paid advertising.
Guo&rsquo;s team has since been contacted by more than 60 investors, all clambering for a stake in the parent company, Moonscape Technologies. &ldquo;We knew there would be some traction, but the scale of this completely exceeded our expectations,&rdquo; Guo notes.
The app&rsquo;s popularity reflects reality. According to China&rsquo;s 2020 national census, 25.4% of households consist of just one person, up from 14.5% in 2010. While older adults still dominate that category, more young people are living alone.
The team, however, announced this week it would rebrand the app globally as Demumu, a softer name inspired by viral plush toy Labubu. Boo! &nbsp;
Fans were underwhelmed. On the Chinese social media platform Weibo, one of the most-liked comments says: &ldquo;Baby, your previous name was the reason you went viral.&rdquo;
Indeed&hellip; Take care of yourself, and look out for your neighbors! We&rsquo;ll be back tomorrow.

FMF-Issue-01-14-26(Featured)

Portfolio’s Great. Why Am I Unhappy? 

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Two Little Charts and the End of Affordability
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.&rdquo;
So wrote the historian James Truslow Adams during the Great Depression in 1931.
It&rsquo;s Adams who&rsquo;s usually credited with popularizing the term &ldquo;American Dream&rdquo; in his book The Epic of America.
&ldquo;It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.&rdquo;
In yesterday&rsquo;s edition, we explored how too many people now feel locked out from that dream &mdash; even as the media yammer about a &ldquo;strong economy.&rdquo; As it turns out, economic statistics don&rsquo;t hold up in the face of many people&rsquo;s lived experience.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> But why? What went wrong?
During the long stretch from the end of World War II until the turn of the 21st century, the American Dream still seemed attainable for all.
Everyone willing to put in an honest day&rsquo;s work was able to achieve a more prosperous life. And by and large they did, no matter the income level where they started.
&ldquo;A rising tide lifts all boats,&rdquo; as the saying goes.
But the tide started going out for many people as the calendar turned to 2000 and the dot-com bust set in.
Take a good hard look at the chart below; you can click to enlarge. It came to my attention over a decade ago thanks to Marc Faber, editor of the renowned Gloom, Boom and Doom Report.
&ldquo;If I were to look at the average family income, excluding capital gains, adjusted for inflation between 2002&ndash;2012, it is clear that 90% of these families experienced a decline in real income and another 5% experienced hardly any gains.&rdquo;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1pBnvbMJlitsnT4RzRXQvI/b41025f5e2809f8fc4b98c7f1ec9bd7c/FMF-Issue-01-13-26_1-Enlarged_.png" alt="Click here to learn more" width="540px" /> <a href="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/enlarged-images/FMF-Issue-01-13-26(1-Enlarged).png">[Click to enlarge]</a>
&ldquo;In fact,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;it is shocking that only 0.1% of families achieved substantial gains in real incomes. Yet I find it hard to believe that it is because of these 0.1% that the rest of the population suffered.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Instead, Faber laid the blame where it belongs &mdash; at the feet of the Federal Reserve.
&ldquo;The Fed's monetary policies have failed to boost the real incomes of most people but have had an enormously favorable impact on just 0.1%...
"In fact, I would argue that the Fed is fully responsible for the fact that 90% of U.S. families have had declining real incomes (inflation adjusted) over the last 10 years or so (as money printing raised the prices of energy, food, education, transportation, health care, insurance, etc.) and have experienced a decline in their net worth. After all, it was the Fed that repeatedly and deliberately created and continues to create bubbles, which benefit only a minority, while hurting the majority."
Yes, the chart is over a decade old. Your editor has searched high and low for something more recent. But really, do you think matters have gotten any better?
One of the economists who compiled the chart published a paper on the same general theme, updated through 2022.
His conclusion is that the upheaval wrought by the government&rsquo;s reaction to COVID made the income disparity even worse than it was before &mdash; stimmy checks notwithstanding.
From 2019&ndash;2022, the bottom 99% saw their after-inflation incomes grow by 1.0% &mdash; compared with the top 1%, who enjoyed 16.1% growth.
&ldquo;Hence,&rdquo; wrote UC-Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez, &ldquo;top 1% families captured 81% of total real income growth per family&rdquo; during that four-year span.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> There&rsquo;s a second chart that helps tell the rest of the story.
Since 2006 or so, economist Mark Perry from the American Enterprise Institute has published what&rsquo;s become known to his followers as the &ldquo;Chart of the Century.&rdquo;
His most recent update was only six months ago. It speaks for itself&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2WTryNvy3pxLwxWCGxmggD/efbfd628a3cae91c526588fd2df64df3/FMF-Issue-01-13-26_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Look at what tops the list. Health care and higher education &mdash; the two things that government has subsidized the most&hellip; mucked up the most&hellip; and made ever more inaccessible to the middle class.
Health care spending in the United States now totals nearly $15,000 per person per year &mdash; by far the highest in the world, 61% higher than No. 2 Switzerland. For those lucky enough to have insurance, premiums rise at a pace far outstripping the official inflation rate. (If you&rsquo;re a W2 employee, you probably noticed a meaningful hit to your first paycheck of the year.)
Meanwhile, the promise of higher ed &mdash; go deep into debt so you can achieve a higher standard of living than you would without the sheepskin &mdash; rings hollow to an entire generation of young adults.
And so the American Dream feels ever more out of reach: Here are the depressing results from a Wall Street Journal-NORC survey conducted last summer.
<ul>
<li>Only 25% of Americans believe they have &ldquo;a good chance of improving their standard of living&rdquo; &mdash; an all-time low in data going back to 1987</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Nearly 70% believe hard work does not translate to getting ahead &mdash; a low in 15 years of survey data</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>And most revealing&hellip; Over 75% doubt that children today will live a better life than their parents.</li>
</ul>
Is it any wonder the U.S. fertility rate has hit historic lows?
We&rsquo;ll leave it there for today. As it happens, we have inflation numbers to tackle next&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Markets Today: Inflation, Earnings, Small-Biz Sentiment
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Both earnings season and economic numbers are coming into view as we approach midmonth.
The Labor Department released the December consumer price index this morning. The official inflation rate held steady at 2.7%. The big drivers were shelter, groceries and meals out (oh, and health care); prices for gasoline fell, as did used vehicles.
As always, any relationship between the official number and your own cost of living is purely coincidental.
Meanwhile, JPMorgan Chase started earnings season on a sour note. The headline numbers beat analyst expectations, but revenue from investment banking fees missed expectations badly. With that, JPM is down 2.8% on the day.
Amid those cross-currents, the S&amp;P 500 rests at 6,962 &mdash; down less than a quarter percent from yesterday&rsquo;s record close.
As for precious metals, gold is holding onto yesterday&rsquo;s gains &mdash; inching higher into record territory, now over $4,600. And silver&rsquo;s rocket ride still isn&rsquo;t over &mdash; up $3.26 as we write to $88.40.
Crypto is hanging tough, with Bitcoin at $93,577 and Ethereum at $3,189.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Small-business owners feel sanguine going into 2026 &mdash; if the Small Business Optimism Index from the National Federation of Independent Business is any indication.
The headline number for December rings in at 99.5 &mdash; up from 99.0 the month before and the highest reading in four months. It&rsquo;s also above the long-term average for this survey, which the NFIB has conducted for over 50 years.
&ldquo;While Main Street business owners remain concerned about taxes, they anticipate favorable economic conditions in 2026 due to waning cost pressures, easing labor challenges and an increase in capital investments,&rdquo; says NFIB chief economist Bill Dunkelberg.
On the portion of the survey where owners are asked to identify their single most important problem, taxes have rocketed higher.
In the November survey, taxes were in third place &mdash; cited by 14% of respondents. But in December, taxes zoomed all the way up to No. 1, cited by 20% &mdash; the highest since May 2021. And &ldquo;quality of labor&rdquo; is still up there, with 19% saying their biggest problem is finding qualified help.
Inflation was cited by 12% and poor sales by 10%. Everything else was in single digits.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />&ldquo;I&rsquo;m From the Government and I&rsquo;m Here to Help&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The proverbial &ldquo;geopolitical tensions&rdquo; appear to be pushing oil prices over $61 for the first time in two months.
Last night, Donald Trump declared that &ldquo;Effective immediately, any Country doing business with the Islamic Republic of Iran will pay a Tariff of 25% on any and all business being done with the United States of America.&rdquo;
So&hellip; the trade truce with China is off? The 50% tariff on India goes to 75%?
China is Iran&rsquo;s biggest trading partner. India is no slouch. Turkey and the United Arab Emirates are also major trade partners with Iran.
This isn&rsquo;t the first time, but it&rsquo;s now apparent that Trump tariffs are not aimed exclusively at &ldquo;leveling the playing field&rdquo; when it comes to trade, nor raising revenue for a cash-strapped federal government.
&ldquo;They are sanctions by another name,&rdquo; tweets Daniel McAdams, executive director of the Ron Paul Institute.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> At midmorning today, Trump upped the ante &mdash; posting a message on social media addressed to protesters in Iran: &ldquo;Help is on the way.&rdquo;
And you thought the U.S. bombing of Iran&rsquo;s nuclear energy facilities last summer was a one-and-done, right?
At the end of last year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid another call on the White House and Trump moved the goalposts: Iran&rsquo;s ballistic missiles became a potential casus belli.
Now it seems the issue is anti-government protests &mdash; which, according to The Jerusalem Post, are being ginned up by Mossad agents inside Iran.
Tempting as it might be to dismiss Trump&rsquo;s statements as bluster, the U.S. State Department is urging all dual U.S.-Iranian citizens to leave Iran now. &ldquo;Have a plan for departing Iran that does not rely on U.S. government help,&rdquo; says its advisory.
And we haven&rsquo;t even gotten to Venezuela yet. That&rsquo;ll have to wait till tomorrow&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Thought for the Day
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Along the lines of today&rsquo;s Bullet No. 1&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2OZS1jwZEDb0n67tJwQBjs/c58c39801093a27cef69d976d64e5e5e/FMF-Issue-01-13-26_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Who We Are and What We&rsquo;re All About
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Thank you for sharing information about Paradigm Press and what it entails,&rdquo; a reader writes after last week&rsquo;s &ldquo;Who We Are and What We&rsquo;re All About&rdquo; edition.
&ldquo;Although I&rsquo;ve been a long-time subscriber, it was refreshing to read. I've also subscribed to&hellip;
[Here we&rsquo;ll redact the names of several competitors&hellip;]
&ldquo;Based on my experience, Paradigm Press stands out as the best among them. The high quality of service, friendly customer support team and transparency about products are quite unique.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;The 5 Bullets on your philosophy has me pondering the past five years,&rdquo; writes a reflective reader.
&ldquo;Most of my life was paycheck to paycheck. Then (age 70) I inherited enough to invest $15,000.
&ldquo;Admittedly, I am an investment advisory &lsquo;fan.&rsquo; Over five years I have spent over $35,000 on various investment services. Here is the joy of it all: By studying, the portfolio is up to $135,000.
&ldquo;Paradigm Press is my favorite right now. Why?
<ul>
<li>This national and international climate is the realm of Jim Rickards. Presidential decisions have a particularly powerful impact on the markets. Jim and the team sift through the noise and give readers the &lsquo;signal.&rsquo; It saves time, and sanity. With investing, it creates a wide perspective in time and space. [We are thinking in terms of decades, and of every nation on the planet.] Peace and plan come with perspective.</li>
</ul>
Jim always recommended gold. In this world, gold is truly &lsquo;shining.&rsquo; Gold, silver and many minerals are shining. Gold is the everything hedge.
<ul>
<li>Reliable information is rare and priceless. Elon Musk risked a lot to take a stand for free speech. Jim Rickards, and team, take that freedom and publish truth and insights. Every person who is well informed radiates a light of truth that protects the whole world. The value of truth blesses everyone on the planet: all nations and generations to come. What a joy to be a part of knowledge!</li>
</ul>
An educated populace makes &lsquo;democracy&rsquo; work!
<ul>
<li>Beyond the perspective on investment trends, and the knowledge on current events, for its own value, Paradigm Press completes a lot of research on companies. A lot of research. Some speculative plays are for a week or a month, some investments develop over years. The time frames are reasonably clear in the discussions.</li>
</ul>
&ldquo;Yes, 2025 was a bull year. One theme at the Nashville conference was to &lsquo;make the profits, and KEEP them.&rsquo; Investors will need to be savvy in the days ahead!
&ldquo;Another note. We give 10% to our worship community. That provides a certain detachment, and a deep enthusiasm for earning. It gives us a sober awareness of the preciousness of resources.
&ldquo;Thank you all, for all you do. You are a &lsquo;motley&rsquo; crew, presenting facets of the diamond of the investment picture. Thank you for the enthusiasm you bring to this adventure.
&ldquo;Blessings for 2026.&rdquo;
Dave responds: Thank you for your kind note.
As I said last week, we don&rsquo;t want customers &mdash; we want happy customers. Glad we can oblige &mdash; although we take nothing for granted and we know trust has to be earned anew every day.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;I look forward to the 5 Bullets probably more than the subscriptions that I have!&rdquo; says another reader. &ldquo;Keep up the good work.&rdquo;
&ldquo;I love your stuff,&rdquo; says another. &ldquo;This is the only email where I learn what is truly going on in our country and the world. Thank you for your direct and honest writings!&rdquo;
Dave: Thank you, sir. However, I&rsquo;ve long warned that this e-letter is only part of a balanced informational diet!
Along those lines&hellip; it&rsquo;s getting so much harder to separate the news from the noise anymore &mdash; even for an old-school journalist like myself.
Sometime in the weeks ahead I hope to devote an entire issue to why that&rsquo;s the case &mdash; and what we can do about it to remain an informed citizenry. Stay tuned&hellip;

FMF-Issue-01-13-26(Featured)

The End of Affordability

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Locked out of the American Dream
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The financial media are flailing around &mdash; trying to make sense of the nonsensical.
Case in point: This morning&rsquo;s Wall Street Journal&hellip;
<blockquote>Call it the glass half-full market.</blockquote>
<blockquote>In recent weeks, government data has been mixed, showing disappointing job gains and robust economic growth. But U.S. investors are focusing on the positive side of things, piling into bets that suggest they have strong confidence that the economy will keep powering forward.</blockquote>
<blockquote>The Dow Jones Industrial average is off to its best start to a year since 2003&hellip;</blockquote>
As related here on Friday, the December job numbers were mediocre. Actually, most of 2025&rsquo;s job numbers were mediocre.
But at the same time, &ldquo;the economy&rdquo; as measured by gross domestic product is going gangbusters. Shortly before Christmas, the Commerce Department reported that GDP grew during the third quarter at an annualized 4.3%. And if the &ldquo;GDPNow&rdquo; figures crunched by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta are any indication, the fourth quarter was even stronger.
So what gives?
After all, you&rsquo;re probably sick and tired by now of hearing about a strong economy while you or people you know are struggling&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The problem lies in what the media and the politicians and Wall Street call &ldquo;the economy.&rdquo; It has zero relationship to what you and I think of as the American Dream &mdash; an ever-improving standard of living and the aspiration that your kids will live a better life than you.
When they talk about the economy, they mean GDP &mdash; a statistical abstraction that has nothing to do with your own prosperity.
Here&rsquo;s how preposterous GDP is &mdash; and this is an illustration spelled out years ago by Bill Bonner, the founder of Paradigm&rsquo;s parent firm: If you mow your lawn, and your neighbor mows his lawn, that has no effect on GDP. But if you pay your neighbor $40 to mow your lawn, and he pays you $40 to mow his, GDP miraculously grows by $80!
But it&rsquo;s much worse than that, as the venture capitalist Peter Thiel pointed out in 2022.
Compare American life in the 1950s, he said, with American life now. If &ldquo;you shift an economy from a single-income household with a homemaker to one with two breadwinners and a third person who&rsquo;s a child-carer,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;statistically you have three jobs instead of one and therefore you have more GDP, and you will exaggerate the amount of progress that&rsquo;s happened.&rdquo;
In other words, it took only one income back in the day to support a middle-class standard of living. Now it takes both parents, scratching and struggling. But if you&rsquo;re an egghead economist, it&rsquo;s all good because &ldquo;the economy&rdquo; as measured by GDP is bigger.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Actually, if you dig into the latest GDP report, there&rsquo;s some useful insight that the mainstream mostly overlooks. It reveals why so many people feel locked out of the American Dream.
The report dug into consumer spending habits &mdash; which on the surface, were strong.
But beneath the surface you find a huge disconnect among the top 10% of income earners and everyone else.
Demographer Neil Howe elaborated during his most recent podcast: &ldquo;You&rsquo;re talking about, at the high end, spending out of asset gains.
&ldquo;This is one way in which, among many, we see equity markets driving the economy. You know, you think it&rsquo;s supposed to be the other way around, right?... But here&rsquo;s one more case in which it&rsquo;s really, without these asset gains, you would not have the top 10% spending like that.
&ldquo;Then, the bottom end &mdash; borrowing, right? The increase in buy-now, pay-later plans. The overall savings rate declined from 5.0% to 4.2%.&rdquo;
Apart from the COVID calamity, the savings rate hasn&rsquo;t been this low since the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis.
No savings, no ability to build for the future &mdash; and no American Dream.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The American Dream of prosperity accessible to all has turned into a nightmarishly stratified society&hellip;
<ul>
<li>A top 0.1% elite that&rsquo;s amassed a greater and greater share of overall wealth during the first 25 years of this century</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>The next 9.9% who can still live comfortably</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Another 40% below that top 10% who have retirement accounts and some home equity, but by and large live paycheck-to-paycheck &mdash; even if they command six-figure household incomes</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>And a bottom 50% who have no investments, no home equity &mdash; and no hope.</li>
</ul>
Now, perhaps, you have a better understanding of why &ldquo;the economy&rdquo; as defined by the Establishment can be &ldquo;strong&rdquo; &mdash; but few people are happy.
Our ethos at Paradigm Press is to empower you to move up a level from wherever you are now. It&rsquo;s still possible to overcome the blunders and deceits of the politicians and Wall Street types.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Fed Pressure and Precious Metals
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> For all the caterwauling you see in the media, nothing has fundamentally changed now that Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell is in the Justice Department&rsquo;s crosshairs.
Late Friday, the DOJ delivered subpoenas to Fed headquarters at the Marriner Eccles Building in Washington.
As it happens, renovations to the Eccles building appear to be at the center of the investigation: Did Powell lie to Congress last summer when he said the renovation plans are not as lavish as reported by the New York Post?
&ldquo;There&rsquo;s no VIP dining room, there&rsquo;s no new marble,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;There are no special elevators. There are no new water features, there&rsquo;s no beehives and there&rsquo;s no roof terrace gardens.&rdquo;
Which, according to a subsequent Post story, &ldquo;directly contradicted the project&rsquo;s own planning documents, which were signed off on by government pen pushers in 2021 &mdash; and which haven&rsquo;t been revised since.&rdquo;
Last night, Powell issued a video statement &mdash; really, it looked like a hostage video &mdash; in which he said the subpoenas were aimed at intimidating the Fed into lowering interest rates faster than it has to date.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7sZE65DfWvy1LUvGhN1cQy/7ad3fffc418fc7f44ff36bf6f3ffa255/FMF-Issue-01-12-26_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" /> Maybe he was blinking &ldquo;We&rsquo;re doomed, buy gold!&rdquo; in Morse code?
To hear the mainstream tell it, the stock market fell at the start of today&rsquo;s trading because of the Trump administration&rsquo;s threat to the Fed&rsquo;s &ldquo;independence.&rdquo;
We won&rsquo;t belabor the point today about how Fed independence is a myth &mdash; other than to remind you that in the 1960s President Lyndon Johnson shoved Fed chair William McChesney Martin into a wall to reinforce his wishes for lower interest rates. As far as we know, Trump hasn&rsquo;t laid a hand on Powell.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> For the stock market, Paradigm trading pro Enrique Abeyta says this news in fact means &ldquo;absolutely nothing.&rdquo;
As he put it on the Daily Feed section of the Paradigm Press mobile app, &ldquo;With market strength broadening, rates and oil prices going lower and good earnings growth - BTSD! (My version &lsquo;Buy the Stupidity Dip&rsquo;).&rdquo;
[You don&rsquo;t have the Paradigm app? You don&rsquo;t know what you&rsquo;re missing. <a href="https://d2z65klgtz99km.cloudfront.net/PPG-App/">Download here</a>.]
And in any event, the stock market reaction was short-lived: What started as a 300-point drop in the Dow has been shaved to less than 100 at last check. That&rsquo;s not even a quarter of a percent. Meanwhile, the S&amp;P 500 and the Nasdaq are flat on the day.
The major indexes are holding up well despite a downdraft in bank stocks after Donald Trump called for a cap on credit-card interest rates of 10%. JPMorgan Chase is down 1.9% and Citi 3.5%.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The link between the Fed subpoenas and the action in precious metals is more clear. 
As our macro maven Jim Rickards tweeted, &ldquo;Gold at a new all-time high. Jay Powell under criminal investigation. First rule of intelligence analysis &mdash; there are no coincidences.&rdquo;
Powell is out the door in four more months regardless because that&rsquo;s when his term ends. But &ldquo;Trump may feel he needs Powell out longer before midterms to give the economy time to heat up,&rdquo; observes Rude Awakening editor Sean Ring. In other words, the Fed might begin mashing the monetary gas pedal sooner than expected.
With that, gold is up $110 as we write to a record $4,618. Silver is up $5.55 to a staggering $85.39. And the HUI index of mining stocks is *this* close to the 800 mark.
Elsewhere in the commodity complex, crude is flat &mdash; a little over $59. As for crypto, Bitcoin is trying to reclaim the $92,000 level while Ethereum has surpassed $3,100.
More musings about the Fed next&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Those Other Times a Fed Chair Lied&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Never mind Fed independence &mdash; how about Fed accountability?
If Jerome Powell lied to Congress, he wouldn&rsquo;t be the first Fed chair to do so.
As we&rsquo;ve chronicled in years past, Ben Bernanke &mdash; who was chair during the 2008 financial crisis &mdash; is known to have committed perjury at least twice.
<ul>
<li>Bernanke told Congress the bonds the Fed inherited in 2008 from the failure of Bear Stearns were investment-grade. Bloomberg News discovered in 2010 &mdash; only after filing a lawsuit &mdash; they were, in fact, junk</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Bernanke also told Congress in February 2010, &ldquo;We have no plans whatsoever to be involved in any foreign bailouts.&rdquo; In reality, Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse topped the list of banks that dumped their crappy mortgage-backed securities on the Fed between 2007&ndash;09.</li>
</ul>
And that leaves out Bernanke&rsquo;s still-murky role in Bank of America&rsquo;s shotgun marriage with Merrill Lynch during the worst of the 2008 crisis. BofA CEO Ken Lewis failed to inform his shareholders at the time about Merrill&rsquo;s huge losses, as the law required. In 2009, Lewis said he withheld that information on orders from Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, who was acting &ldquo;at the request&rdquo; of Ben Bernanke.
Seems Bernanke was lying about matters that did far more harm to everyday Americans than some posh renovations that went over budget.
But he never even got a strongly worded letter, much less the handcuffs-and-leg-irons treatment. And so it goes&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Comic Relief
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Not exactly new, but perhaps newly relevant?
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7q7mRYt6FoDRWivbbTfeHI/f478ed2dc64d72d0b749d38f40856fb5/FMF-Issue-01-12-26_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Ukraine, Small Business
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Was disappointed in false information that Dave Gonigam expressed in last Tuesday&rsquo;s edition,&rdquo; a reader writes.
The reader takes exception to a brief passage about Washington meddling overseas in which your editor stated, "And that U.S. meddling is nowhere near over: Trump continues to arm Ukraine."
&ldquo;The United States is not arming Ukraine,&rdquo; the reader asserts. &ldquo;President Trump has explicitly stated many times that the USA is selling arms to NATO countries (at a profit) and THEY are choosing to provide the arms to Ukraine. President Trump has said many times publicly that we have spent enough of our money giving arms to Ukraine and will no longer continue to do so.
&ldquo;And oh, by the way, why use the word &lsquo;meddling&rsquo;? This war was inherited by President Trump. You consider us &lsquo;meddling&rsquo; in it? The president is trying to end it. (!)
&ldquo;I look forward to seeing a publicized correction. Facts matter, especially in a service such as Paradigm Press.&rdquo;
Dave responds: 
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4h1Oms01CM8aYI5p4m7ZMG/7ce4e4ffbb4090acbf3b307c989ae6fe/FMF-Issue-01-12-26_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
"We're going to send some more weapons,&rdquo; Trump himself said the day of that statement. &ldquo;We have to."
And it&rsquo;s not just &ldquo;defensive.&rdquo; Who honestly believes that Kyiv could have launched nearly 100 drones on one of Vladimir Putin&rsquo;s homes at the end of 2025 without knowledge and coordination from Washington?
Unless and until Trump announces he&rsquo;s washing his hands of the whole affair, yes, he&rsquo;s meddling.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> On the subject of the Chicago Bears&rsquo; attempt to squeeze out special favors from taxpayers for a new stadium, a reader brings up &ldquo;the evil not mentioned.
&ldquo;The big/large companies can negotiate for special treatment, often motivated by business-unfriendly policies in the given city/state or move to another state.
&ldquo;What went unsaid is that the many small businesses have to labor under the business-unfriendly nature of their locations, thus propping up the legitimacy of a local bad business environment.&rdquo;
Dave: Good point. Small business has been getting the shaft over and over in recent years &mdash; starting with lockdown in 2020, when small retailers had to close their doors while Walmart, Target and Costco stayed open.
Nobody noticed because it was Christmas Day, but The Wall Street Journal published a worthwhile story about how for small businesses, &ldquo;years of high inflation, increasingly cautious consumers and tariffs are weighing on earnings and prompting cutbacks. Over the past six months, private firms with fewer than 50 workers have steadily shed jobs, according to payroll processor ADP, cutting 120,000 in November alone. Midsize and, especially, large firms have continued to add jobs.&rdquo;
Indeed the article points out how the divide between big and small businesses is fueling the divide between high- and low-income Americans.
&ldquo;Workers at small businesses tend to earn less than those at large companies. And the increases in stock-market wealth stemming from the rally in shares of large, public companies accrue mostly to the rich.&rdquo;
And so we end where we began today: It&rsquo;s not a robust economy driving stock market gains. It&rsquo;s stock market gains propping up the economy, as more and more people feel locked out of the American Dream.
We&rsquo;ll dig deeper into the theme tomorrow&hellip;

FMF-Issue-01-12-26(Featured)

Locked out of the American Dream

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />&ldquo;The Next Starlink&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Amazon is quietly building the next Starlink,&rdquo; writes Paradigm editor Davis Wilson. &ldquo;And the best part? The market is completely missing it.&rdquo;
That&rsquo;s the kind of insight you only get when you&rsquo;re on the ground &mdash; while CES 2026 is still unfolding &mdash; not weeks later when the headlines have already moved on.
For several days now, Davis Wilson of sister e-letter The Million Mission has been navigating the chaos of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, deliberately looking past the spectacle to find ideas investors will still be talking about years from now.
Amazon, Davis reports, didn&rsquo;t bother with a traditional CES booth this year.
Instead, the company rented out a private conference room &mdash; a deliberate move that kept the real story off the showroom floor and away from casual passersby.
Inside were familiar Amazon products: updated Kindles, new Ring doorbells, even an AI wearable assistant.
And then, off to the side &mdash; almost hiding in plain sight &mdash; was the most important thing in the room.
Leo.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2DUdToP88z5ekZqpnIMevs/0573173e73e0baf96b111fcd4d50aa03/FMF-Issue-010926_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" /> Photo courtesy: Davis Wilson
&ldquo;Leo is Amazon&rsquo;s low-Earth orbit satellite network,&rdquo; Davis explains, &ldquo;its answer to SpaceX&rsquo;s Starlink.&rdquo;
Rather than relying on cell towers or buried fiber, &ldquo;Leo beams broadband directly from space to homes, businesses, ships, aircraft and remote regions.&rdquo;
The implication is massive. Connectivity stops being a local utility and becomes a global subscription service.
What surprised Davis most wasn&rsquo;t the ambition &mdash; it was the progress.
<ul>
<li>Amazon already has 175 satellites in orbit</li>
<li>80 launches are scheduled for 2026, each capable of carrying 25&ndash;35 satellites</li>
<li>The end goal: a 3,000-satellite constellation.</li>
</ul>
&ldquo;Put that together and it&rsquo;s clear Amazon is approaching meaningful global coverage much sooner than most investors realize.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Yet Leo receives almost no attention,&rdquo; Davis notes, even though &ldquo;the market already understands how valuable this type of business can be.
&ldquo;Just look at SpaceX.&rdquo;
Rockets may grab headlines, but analysts agree that Starlink is the profit engine &mdash; a recurring-revenue business with software-like margins once the infrastructure is in place.
It&rsquo;s why SpaceX is rumored to be considering an IPO as early as 2026, &ldquo;at a valuation as high as $1.5 trillion,&rdquo; Davis points out.
&ldquo;But when it comes to Amazon?&rdquo; he adds. &ldquo;Leo gets no such credit.
&ldquo;It is not meaningfully reflected in Amazon&rsquo;s valuation. It is barely discussed. Most investors don&rsquo;t even know it exists!&rdquo;
After seeing Leo up close at CES, Davis&rsquo; takeaway: &ldquo;Amazon is exactly the kind of stock I want to own long term &mdash; while the market looks the other way.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />The OpenAI Scare
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> As promised on Wednesday, we&rsquo;re back with four more of pro trader Enrique Abeyta&rsquo;s 2026 insights, and he starts with a shift few investors are prepared for: After years of dominance, Enrique believes the &ldquo;Magnificent Seven&rdquo; are nearing an inflection point.
The group of tech stocks jumped about 75% in 2023, gained around 60% in 2024 and still posted returns above 20% in 2025. But last year was the first time the cracks showed &mdash; with about half of the group trailing the S&amp;P 500&rsquo;s ~17% gain.
&ldquo;I think 2026 will be the first year in a long time these stocks underperform as a group,&rdquo; Enrique says. The pressure point, in his view, is the pace of AI spending.
&ldquo;At some point in 2026, I think OpenAI will run into difficulties getting the financing for its trillion-dollar buildout.&rdquo; When that happens, he expects a sharp pullback across AI-related stocks.
But that doesn&rsquo;t mean the AI cycle is over. &ldquo;AI is much bigger than OpenAI,&rdquo; Enrique says. As spending slows, many large tech companies could see cash flow improve as capital expenditures level off.&nbsp;
By year-end, he expects the OpenAI-driven sell-off to keep Mag 7 from leading the market, despite several individual big tech names still setting up well.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> On interest rates, Enrique argues the environment shifts in 2026. Inflation and long-term yields have been easing, and he expects the Federal Reserve to respond more forcefully.
&ldquo;We could see 100bp&ndash;150bps cuts in the next 18 months,&rdquo; driven by softer employment, political pressure and market instability tied to AI.
That backdrop points to a choppier market, he says, but not a lower one.
Enrique expects earnings growth and lower rates to push stocks higher by year-end 2026, even if the ride is rough. The midyear catalyst may resemble an &ldquo;OpenAI-pocalypse,&rdquo; replacing last year&rsquo;s tariff scare.
He closes with a call on crypto. After missing the mark in 2025 &mdash; &ldquo;It was the only 2025 stock market prediction that I got wrong,&rdquo; he says &mdash; Enrique still expects Bitcoin to reach $250,000 in 2026, driven by lower rates, rising liquidity and renewed risk appetite.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The U.S. labor market ended 2025 with a whimper. 
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, employers added 50,000 jobs in December, falling short of expectations for 70,000. Even so, the unemployment rate slipped to 4.4%, slightly better than the 4.5% economists forecasted.
The disconnect reflects what many economists now describe as a &ldquo;Great Freeze&rdquo; in the job market. Hiring has slowed markedly, but large-scale layoffs, the usual signal of a deeper downturn, have yet to appear.
Notably, December&rsquo;s job growth was well below the 150,000&ndash;200,000 jobs per month typically needed to keep pace with population growth, suggesting labor-market slack continues to build beneath the surface.
That slack shows most clearly in underemployment. Over the course of 2025, the number of Americans working part-time for economic reasons rose by nearly 1 million compared with 2024. By December, 5.3 million people were stuck working part-time, not by choice, but because hours were cut or full-time jobs weren&rsquo;t available.
Taken together, the December report points to a labor market that&rsquo;s still cooling &mdash; not yet freezing &mdash; heading into 2026.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Looking at futures this morning, all three major U.S. stock indexes are waking up on the right side of the bed. The tech-heavy Nasdaq is up 0.40% to 25,800 while the Dow and S&amp;P 500 are both up around 0.30% to 49,645 and 6,985 respectively.
As for commodities, oil&rsquo;s up 0.85% to $58.23 for a barrel of West Texas crude. And precious metals are hitting the ground running. Gold&rsquo;s up 0.70% to $4,494.10 per ounce, and silver&rsquo;s up 4.15% to $78.32.
The crypto market, on the other hand, is sinking into red. Bitcoin&rsquo;s down 0.55% to $90,220; Ethereum&rsquo;s down 0.60% to $3,075.
Of course, everything is subject to change if the Supreme Court tariff ruling comes out today. We promise follow-up coverage on Monday.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Trump Targets &ldquo;Dark Landlords&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> It began in the wreckage of the 2007&ndash;09 housing bust. Millions of foreclosed single-family homes landed on the federal government&rsquo;s balance sheet. In 2012, Washington quietly decided it didn&rsquo;t want to be a landlord.
Under a program known as REO-to-Rental, the government sold large bundles of foreclosed homes at steep discounts &mdash; but only to buyers who could deploy enormous amounts of capital at once.
If you were a hedge fund or private-equity shop willing to write a billion-dollar check, you were welcome. If you were a small investor hoping to buy the empty house down the block, you weren&rsquo;t.
The result was predictable. Firms like Blackstone amassed tens of thousands of homes, concentrated especially in fast-growing Sun Belt markets, and turned them into rental empires.
Once the easy money was made, many of those portfolios were spun into publicly traded REITs, including Invitation Homes (INVH). Wall Street had discovered a new asset class: single-family homes as yield instruments.
That model thrived in the years after 2020 when home prices surged and mortgage rates locked would-be buyers out of the market. But even then, cracks were visible.
As Paradigm&rsquo;s value investor Zach Scheidt noted last year, higher rates don&rsquo;t last forever. When rates fall, pent-up housing demand tends to reappear &mdash; and renters try to become owners. That dynamic threatens occupancy rates and pricing power for single-family rental giants.
Now the politics are catching up&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> This week, President Donald Trump said he would move to ban large corporate investors from buying single-family homes, arguing that homeownership has drifted out of reach for younger Americans.
&ldquo;People live in homes, not corporations,&rdquo; Trump said on social media, adding that he would 1) press Congress to put the proposal into law and 2) expand on it at Davos later this month.
The reaction was immediate. On Wednesday, shares of Blackstone fell more than 5%. Invitation Homes dropped roughly 6%. Builders FirstSource slid as well.
Skepticism followed just as quickly. Some economists caution that banning the biggest players may simply open the door to smaller and midsized investors, not first-time buyers.
Additionally, institutional investors own a very small share of all single-family homes nationally &mdash; about 0.5%, according to Blackstone&rsquo;s own figures.
But when looking only at the rental segment of single-family homes, institutional ownership rises to around 4%, per Urban Institute data.
Still, the symbolism matters. No sitting president has singled out large institutional buyers of single-family homes as a central policy problem
For years, these <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c73MVMVB7mI">&ldquo;dark landlords&rdquo;</a> &mdash; as our managing editor Dave Gonigam calls them &mdash; have been an uncomfortable footnote to the housing crisis, tolerated and then normalized.
Trump&rsquo;s proposal signals that patience for this arrangement may finally be running out. Whether it changes prices? Debatable.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />The Fate of Venezuela&rsquo;s Gold
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> About 31 tonnes of Venezuelan gold have been held at the Bank of England since the 1980s, part of the long-standing practice of storing national reserves in London, one of the world&rsquo;s major bullion hubs.
Since 2018, however, Venezuela has been blocked from reclaiming it &mdash; and the dispute over who controls the gold has only grown more complex.
The standoff started after Venezuela&rsquo;s contested 2018 presidential election. Western governments, including the U.K. and the U.S., refused to recognize Nicol&aacute;s Maduro as the country&rsquo;s legitimate leader.
When Caracas later requested the return of its gold, the Bank of England declined. Bloomberg reported at the time that U.S. officials had encouraged their U.K. counterparts to help cut Maduro off from overseas assets.
That stalemate sparked some creative &mdash; and risky &mdash; workarounds. In 2019, Venezuelan officials entertained a back-channel plan pitched by a U.K. national who said he represented a Swiss firm and could persuade English officials to release the gold for a discounted sale through European banks.
The plan collapsed when the intermediary disappeared, leaving behind false contact details &mdash; a vivid illustration of how isolated and cash-strapped the Venezuelan government had become.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> By 2020, the fight had moved to the London courts. Venezuela sued to recover the gold &mdash; valued in court filings at roughly $1.95 billion &mdash; arguing it was needed for pandemic relief. 
At the same time, opposition leader Juan Guaid&oacute;, recognized by the U.S. and U.K. as acting president, asserted his own claim to the reserves. Legal gridlock followed.
Now, The Guardian reports the case has taken on new urgency after Maduro&rsquo;s detention by U.S. authorities. While former vice president and current acting president Delcy Rodr&iacute;guez once denounced the gold freeze as &ldquo;blatant piracy,&rdquo; her tone has recently, heh, softened.
Still, Venezuela is unlikely to want its gold stranded indefinitely, especially in light of Russia&rsquo;s sanctioned central-bank assets, frozen since 2022.
With Venezuela&rsquo;s political future uncertain and foreign courts split over legitimacy, the bullion remains in limbo &mdash; locked in London vaults.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />The Peacock&rsquo;s Put out to Pasture
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> CNBC has officially lost its peacock. 
On Dec. 13, 2025, the network quietly rolled out its new logo, the result of NBCUniversal&rsquo;s corporate shell game that spun CNBC into a new entity called Versant. The name stays. The bird does not.
The replacement logo, with a fused N and B, is a nod to CNBC&rsquo;s original 1989 logo:
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5narR9NjQ44vaiNJ8m0EGI/01b188dffd62873837dc520a19838687/FMF-Issue-010926_2_.png" alt="pub" width="247px" />
After&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6JkmLkRYmuojzGcUirq7nx/bf94ebc04a6cd6aaa1eb41e3a610489c/FMF-Issue-010926_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" /> Anonymous designer: &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure everyone involved was simply relieved to call it done.&rdquo;
If this seems familiar, last year MSNBC got its own makeover into MS NOW. Different network, same minimalist logo drained of all personality.
And if Cracker Barrel is any indication, when legacy brands shed their familiar graphics, it&rsquo;s usually not just a design change. It&rsquo;s a complete vibe shift.
Happy Friday, reader! Watch your inbox for Saturday&rsquo;s recap issue. Take care&hellip;

FMF-Issue-010926(Featured)

CES 2026: Amazon Intel

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />A Sun-Seeker Visits Vegas
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas isn&rsquo;t just about the flashiest gadgets. It&rsquo;s where early prototypes sit next to finished products and where you occasionally stumble onto something that feels slightly ahead of its time.
That&rsquo;s exactly the feeling surrounding one of the more subtly ambitious debuts at CES 2026: the Solar Mars Bot from Silicon Valley-based company Jackery.
Jackery is already well known to CES regulars. For more than a decade, it has built a reputation in portable energy, off-grid power and home backup solutions.
This year, Jackery showed off plenty of familiar hardware, from new portable power stations to an eye-catching solar gazebo designed to turn outdoor space into a living room or home office.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />But the solar product that&rsquo;s drawing attention at this year&rsquo;s CES isn&rsquo;t fixed in place. Instead, it roams. 
Mounted on wheels and paired with auto-retractable 300-watt solar panels, the solar bot can navigate autonomously, reposition itself during the day and adjust its angle to capture more sunlight.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3llo4wO3bS2rNGg9kBx4Xc/4fa894e0bf6d61418f9398c27ff8eca1/fmf_tweet.png" alt="tweet" width="450px" />
When charging is done, the panels fold back in, making the whole system surprisingly compact for what it does. According to Jackery, the Mars Bot uses AI-enhanced computer vision to avoid obstacles and optimize its placement throughout the day.
The platform can travel at speeds up to 5.9 feet per second, handle modest terrain and tilt its panels up to 60 degrees to improve solar capture as conditions change.
Power is stored in modular LiFePO4 batteries, each rated at 2 kilowatt-hours, with total capacity designed to scale while supporting AC, DC and USB outputs.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The idea is simple: Panels capture optimal solar energy, store power onboard and deliver it wherever electricity is needed. The use cases Jackery highlights range from outdoor recreation to emergency or rescue scenarios.
There&rsquo;s also a more forward-looking thread running through the pitch, potentially powering portable satellite internet, future AI systems and personal robotics &mdash; situations where mobile, self-sustaining energy matters as much as raw capacity.
The Solar Mars Bot first appeared as a concept at CES 2024. Seeing it return in 2026 as a working product says something about the next generation of energy capture. Instead of bigger panels or heavier batteries, this is about mobility and autonomy that actively seeks out sunlight rather than passively waiting for it.
CES has always been at its best when it shows how familiar problems can be solved in novel ways. A robot that wanders around looking for sunlight? Feels right at home in Las Vegas or even in your own backyard.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />&ldquo;Prediction Season Is in Full Swing&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the first full trading week of 2026, and prediction season is in full swing,&rdquo; says Paradigm&rsquo;s pro trader Enrique Abeyta.
&ldquo;To kick off the new year, I want to share some of my surprise predictions for the next 12 months,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Like stock picking, predictions are all about probability. There are no guarantees.
&ldquo;What I&rsquo;m presenting here are some out-of-consensus views that I think aren&rsquo;t just possible &mdash; they&rsquo;re probable. Outcomes that, if they happen, are going to surprise a lot of folks.
&ldquo;And I don&rsquo;t want you to be caught off guard,&rdquo; Enrique says. &ldquo;So here we go!&rdquo;
Small Caps Finally Outperform
&ldquo;In the long term, I&rsquo;m not a fan of small-cap stocks,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re subscale companies with inferior balance sheets and more exposure to variables like inflation, interest rates and commodities.
&ldquo;But right now, they have undemanding valuations. Look at this chart showing the valuation of the midcap stocks over the last few decades&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7Dll8pgzK4LJ84awNl5M9V/360aff89f410bf01350990db9a5452ca/fmf_chart.png" alt="Chart" />
&ldquo;Valuations are back down to relative levels last seen in the late 1990s,&rdquo; Enrique points out.
&ldquo;Back then, we saw a rotation into technology leaders (think today&rsquo;s Mag 7), causing increased multiples in those stocks and lower multiples in everything else.
&ldquo;With an acceleration in non-AI economic growth and lower interest rates, I think the setup for smaller stocks is superb,&rdquo; he says.
&ldquo;Remember that in 2000, the S&amp;P 500 was down 9% and the Nasdaq was down 40%. But the Russell 2000 was only down 4%, while the equal-weight S&amp;P 500 was up 12%.
&ldquo;We don&rsquo;t think the major indexes will be down as much as they were in 2000,&rdquo; Enrique says. &ldquo;But the outperformance of smaller stocks could be just as much.&rdquo;
On Friday, we&rsquo;ll be back with four additional 2026 insights from Enrique &mdash; predictions investors won&rsquo;t want to miss.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The S&amp;P 500 and DJIA hit new intraday highs today, extending their strong start to 2026. But the rally appears to be stalling&hellip; 
The Dow&rsquo;s now pulled back 180 points to 49,280; at the same time, the S&amp;P 500 is still in the green &mdash; up 0.10% to 6,950. The tech-heavy Nasdaq, on the other hand, is up 0.45% to 23,650.
As for commodities, Venezuela will ship sanctioned oil to the U.S. on an ongoing basis, according to White House sources. The president says the initial tranche will total 30&ndash;50 million barrels, sold at market price &mdash; with deliveries expected to continue indefinitely. Proceeds will be held in U.S.-controlled accounts and released at Washington&rsquo;s discretion.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright confirmed the arrangement today, saying the U.S. will market both stored Venezuelan crude and future production. Oil that previously flowed largely to China will now be rerouted directly to U.S. ports.
The price of crude, at the time of writing, is down 1.30% to $56.38 for a barrel of WTI. According to CNBC taking data from Reuters: &ldquo;Oil prices slip as traders react to expected increased supply from Venezuela.&rdquo; Huh. But Valero Energy (VLO) shares are up 4.15%.
Precious metals? Gold and silver are both in the red: down 0.55% (to $4,469.70 per ounce) and 3.90% (to $77.90) respectively. More on silver in a moment.
Finally, the crypto market is likewise in the red; Bitcoin&rsquo;s pulled back 1.30% to $91,385 while Ethereum&rsquo;s lost 2.45% to $3,160.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Existing Mines Beat Blueprints
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Precious metal miners have done very well over the past year. But today I&rsquo;m going to show why silver miners in particular have much further to run,&rdquo; says The Daily Reckoning editor Adam Sharp.
In 2025, gold rose about 70%, but silver did even better, jumping over 150%. At first glance, it might seem logical to assume mining profits rose by similar percentages.
But as Adam explains, mining profits don&rsquo;t rise in a straight line with metal prices. That&rsquo;s because most mining costs are relatively fixed. Once those costs are covered, each additional dollar increase in the price of silver flows disproportionately to the bottom line.
Adam points to Pan American Silver (PAAS) as a clear, real-world example. The company publishes its all-in sustaining cost (AISC), a widely followed metric that captures the cost to produce each ounce of metal.
In Q1 2024, Pan American&rsquo;s AISC for silver was about $16.68 per ounce, while its realized silver price averaged $22.61. That left a margin of about $6 per ounce.
Fast-forward to Q3 2025 and the picture changes dramatically. Average silver prices climbed to around $39 per ounce, while costs edged slightly lower. Profit per ounce rose to around $23 &mdash; nearly four times the margin from early 2024.
And that&rsquo;s before considering higher price scenarios. &ldquo;If silver stays around the current $80 level and their costs stay around $16 per ounce, the profit per ounce will rise to a crazy $64,&rdquo; Adam says. &ldquo;So from Q1 2024 to Q1 2026, many silver miners&rsquo; profitability per ounce has increased by a ridiculous 10X.&rdquo;
Margins are one thing. Volume is another. &ldquo;In Q3 2025, PAAS produced around 5.5 million ounces of silver. If they maintain that production in this current quarter&rdquo; &mdash; at current prices &mdash; &ldquo;the company could earn about $352 million in three months, from silver alone,&rdquo; says Adam.
But silver isn&rsquo;t the company&rsquo;s only revenue stream. In the same quarter, Pan American produced about 183,000 ounces of gold, at an AISC near $1,697 per ounce, adding another powerful profit driver.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;That is a very long way of saying that silver (and gold) miners are absolutely printing money in this environment,&rdquo; Adam emphasizes.
Why is this an unusually favorable setup? Mining is energy-intensive. Diesel and gasoline can account for up to 15% of operating costs. That makes today&rsquo;s sub-$60 oil environment a meaningful tailwind.
Adam says this setup may rival &mdash; or even exceed &mdash; past bull markets. &ldquo;I would argue this is one of the all-time great environments for miners.&rdquo;
Established miners have a clear advantage. Unlike explorers and developers, they already operate permitted, long-life mines. New projects, by contrast, still face years &mdash; often decades &mdash; of regulatory reviews, financing and construction before they ever produce an ounce, especially outside the U.S.
Adam&rsquo;s takeaway: &ldquo;I want to primarily invest in the companies making a killing today,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Not ones that have a long road of capital raises and permitting ahead of them.
&ldquo;Hopefully this [helps] explain why despite huge gains over the past year, I haven&rsquo;t sold a single silver miner,&rdquo; he concludes. &ldquo;And I have no plans to anytime soon.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Davos Stops Dissembling
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />There&rsquo;s something almost reassuring about Davos in January. Like clockwork, the world&rsquo;s power trippers and control freaks gather in the picturesque Swiss ski town.
But in January 2024, our managing editor Dave Gonigam noticed <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/davos-welcomes-trump" target="_blank" rel="noopener">something unusual at the World Economic Forum.</a> Amid performative panic over &ldquo;misinformation&rdquo; and hypothetical pandemics, a few heavyweight figures in finance did something that wasn&rsquo;t supposed to happen: They acknowledged Donald Trump might not be the cartoon villain of Davos&rsquo; imagination.
Trump wasn&rsquo;t exactly embraced. Just&hellip; quietly acknowledged. JPMorgan&rsquo;s CEO Jamie Dimon, for instance, who spent most of his professional life orbiting Democratic politics, admitted that Trump had been &ldquo;kind of right&rdquo; on NATO, immigration, trade and China. Not a love letter; just a balance-sheet observation.
At the time, it felt faintly subversive. (Maybe even a slip of the tongue chalked up to altitude sickness?) After all, Davos is a place where acceptable opinions are carefully curated.
Now, Microsoft, crypto company Ripple and management consulting firm McKinsey have each agreed to pay up to $1 million to sponsor &ldquo;USA House,&rdquo; a Davos venue that will serve as a base for U.S. government officials during President Trump&rsquo;s visit later this month. (JPMorgan Chase has also been approached to participate, though the bank has not publicly confirmed whether it will sign on.)
The venue itself is a small 19th-century church just outside the forum&rsquo;s official security perimeter &mdash; which somehow feels like a metaphor.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5Gw0DicozusaaFL3KHjfbq/7c1c60c771fb6a727eb766f11d97fc3d/fmf_headline.png" alt="Headline" width="350px" />
Courtesy: X
To be clear, Davos has always had its unofficial &ldquo;house&rdquo; system. Countries and corporations convert shops and hotels into networking hubs every January.
What&rsquo;s different this year is that U.S. companies are no longer quietly hedging. They&rsquo;re openly positioning themselves around power brokers in Trump&rsquo;s political orbit &mdash; a shift that sits neatly alongside the WEF&rsquo;s 2026 theme: &ldquo;A Spirit of Dialogue.&rdquo;
And they&rsquo;re doing it in the most Davos way possible: discreetly, at a premium price, while pretending it was always part of the plan.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />James Altucher: Right on the Money
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Bull&rsquo;s-eye&hellip; James Altucher was right on target with this one! Zing! Spot-on!&rdquo; writes an enthusiastic contributor about our New Year&rsquo;s Day 5 Bullets edition, featuring five of James&rsquo; 2026 predictions.
I&rsquo;m signing off for the day&hellip; Take care, reader!

fmf hero 010726

Can Robots Get a Suntan? 

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Altucher: Back on the Bitcoin Train
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Wait, what?
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3EfPtQoU6SHk9mRgPqBTwg/c257f5a3b14893821be5aea4e398f263/FMF-Issue-010626_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
From the Reuters newswire: &ldquo;The United States may subsidize oil companies to enable them to rebuild Venezuela's energy infrastructure, President Donald Trump said in an interview with NBC News on Monday.&rdquo;
Trump told NBC that reviving the Venezuelan oil industry will require &ldquo;a lot of money.
&ldquo;A tremendous amount of money will have to be spent and the oil companies will spend it, and then they&rsquo;ll get reimbursed by us or through revenue.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Well, I guess that answers the question we were pondering yesterday: What incentive do U.S. oil firms have to sink prodigious amounts of capital into rebuilding Venezuela&rsquo;s oil industry when oil prices sit near five-year lows?
I confess to a lack of imagination. My limited mind did not allow for the possibility that the administration might resort to soaking the U.S. taxpayer &mdash; handing their hard-earned dollars to Exxon, Chevron et al.
And so, on further reflection, I take back what I said yesterday &mdash; about how investing in post-Maduro Venezuela would be like investing in post-Saddam Iraq in 2003 or post-Gaddafi Libya in 2011.
There will be plenty of moneymaking opportunities coming out of this regime-change op &mdash; even if Venezuela sinks into chaos, with leftist paramilitaries sabotaging the pipelines to ensure the Yanquis are deprived of the country&rsquo;s oil wealth.
Yesterday, our James Altucher convened an urgent &ldquo;all-hands&rdquo; strategy session with his analysts to discuss the post-Maduro landscape. Out of respect for his paying subscribers, I won&rsquo;t say too much about the recommendations that came out of this livestream&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &hellip;but I can reveal this much: Venezuela has put James back on the Bitcoin train.
If you&rsquo;ve been with us for a while, you&rsquo;ll recall James sold all his Bitcoin in early 2022 &mdash; having first recommended it in 2013 at a mere $114.
His rationale for selling? &ldquo;When I make an investment, the one thing I want to make sure of is managing my risk,&rdquo; he said at the time. &ldquo;With crypto now, I need to see it being used by people [because] it makes their lives better. But nobody really needs to use Bitcoin&hellip;&rdquo;
In other words, he saw more potential in Ethereum and a select few alt-coins that are actually used to conduct commerce. Bitcoin, in contrast, was evolving into digital gold &mdash; a reserve asset that you accumulate as a hedge against geopolitical or societal or currency turmoil.
Which is exactly what Venezuela is experiencing now, right?
&ldquo;When countries go through moments like this,&rdquo; says James this week, &ldquo;people don&rsquo;t wait around to see what happens to their currency or their savings. They move into assets that sit outside the system.
&ldquo;When a local currency fails, people don't wait for a new government&mdash; they move to the only asset the state can&rsquo;t seize or inflate.
&ldquo;This could be a large adoption event, and one more catalyst for mass crypto adoption.&rdquo;
<a id="2"></a>
To be sure, the crypto space enjoyed a big pop after Maduro&rsquo;s capture on Saturday &mdash; and those gains are sticking more than 72 hours later, with Bitcoin approaching $94,000 and Ethereum a shade below $3,300.
More insight from James follows immediately&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Hyundai&rsquo;s Humanoid Robot
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The big highlight so far this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas fulfills a prediction James Altucher made in this space on New Year&rsquo;s Day&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/30Nkny4XFTRtJjkgGNOV3P/7c85e0c290affda5b8357d0185cc6da2/FMF-Issue-010626_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
&ldquo;Hyundai Motor Group says it will roll out human-like robots in its factories from 2028,&rdquo; reports the BBC, &ldquo;as major companies race to use the new technology.&rdquo;
The company&rsquo;s robot, named Atlas, showed its stuff on the convention floor yesterday &mdash; including the capacity to lift 110 pounds. Hyundai says it &ldquo;plans to integrate Atlas across its global network.&rdquo;
Time was that James Altucher wasn&rsquo;t sold on humanoid robots. Then it dawned on him, as he explained in our New Year&rsquo;s Day special edition: &ldquo;The entire world has been constructed to fit 8,000,000,000 5&rsquo;8&rdquo;, two-armed, two-legged humans.
&ldquo;If you want a robot that can vacuum, make a bed, cook, pack goods, stack shelves, move objects down hallways, climb stairs, open doors and work inside spaces already optimized for people&hellip; you don&rsquo;t redesign the world.
&ldquo;You redesign the worker. That worker is humanoid.&rdquo;
James points out there were fewer than 1,000 humanoid robots worldwide in 2023 &mdash; a number that grew to 25,000 by last year.
He expects that number to swell to 100,000 this year&hellip; and a million next year. Critical mass.
&ldquo;Humanoid robots solve a problem governments, corporations and societies cannot solve any other way,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;And that&rsquo;s before we account for use cases we haven&rsquo;t even imagined yet.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />The Floor Under Silver
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Silver is back within sight of $80 an ounce &mdash; with two big drivers behind it here in early January.
On New Year&rsquo;s Day, the Chinese government implemented a new export-licensing scheme for silver.
&ldquo;That means 60&ndash;70% of the globally traded refined supply will require Beijing&rsquo;s permission to leave the country,&rdquo; writes money manager Charlie Garcia. China needs that silver to build out its solar-panel and electric-vehicle capacity.
And it&rsquo;s not as if the rest of the world can wave a magic wand to spin up new production.
Garcia reminds us there&rsquo;s very little &ldquo;primary&rdquo; silver mining. Most silver production is a byproduct from gold mining, copper mining and so on. &ldquo;This means you can&rsquo;t just &lsquo;mine more silver&rsquo; because silver prices went up,&rdquo; Garcia writes for MarketWatch. &ldquo;You&rsquo;d have to mine more copper first.&rdquo;
Meanwhile&hellip; Bloomberg will steadily recalibrate its Bloomberg Commodity Index starting on Thursday and continuing into next week. Because silver soared 147% during 2025, its weight in the index will rise from 4% to around 9%. There&rsquo;s a lot of institutional money tied to this index, and it is moving into silver ahead of this shift.
Yes, both of these developments are known quantities and have been for weeks. They&rsquo;re not anything actionable. But they do have the effect of keeping a floor under the silver price.
Even the most pessimistic observers we follow think the floor on silver is now $50 &mdash; which we&rsquo;ll remind you is where silver was trading only three months ago before this furious rally.
Checking our screens, silver is now back over $80 for the first time since last week &mdash; up $3.73 today alone.
And gold is up $29 to $4,477 &mdash; the highest since a steep sell-off a week ago Monday.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> It&rsquo;s going to be a nail-biter, but today might be the day the S&amp;P 500 sets a record close.
The last one came at the end of the abbreviated Christmas Eve trading session &mdash; 6,932. At last check, the index rests at 6,933 &mdash; up a half-percent on the day. The Dow is also firmly in the green at 49,179 &mdash; on track to top yesterday&rsquo;s record. The Nasdaq is also staging a modest rally, but it has work to do before exceeding its late-October highs.
The Venezuela-fueled burst of enthusiasm for energy stocks we saw in yesterday&rsquo;s trading is cooling off: Chevron is down nearly 3%, Exxon down 1.2% and the XLE ETF down 1.4%.
Crude, meanwhile, is little changed at $58.15.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Comic Relief
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Wow, and people call me a cynic&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/DzwgnlQRvEUcXuKxqV91w/588995ca19a4e1e773dbf31f40ce8bc4/FMF-Issue-010626_3_.png.jpg" alt="pub" width="540px" />
And speaking of Venezuela&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Venezuela, Kimmel
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;A most excellent single-issue piece you did there on that boneheaded gangsta move on Venezuela. Spot-on!!&rdquo; a longtime reader writes after yesterday&rsquo;s edition.
&ldquo;You and I have been around long enough to know that funny things can and will happen on the way to the forum. In other words, look out for the myriad of unintended consequences.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;I thought this was an investment publication not let&rsquo;s-kick-Trump&rsquo;s-ass publication,&rdquo; counters a critic.
&ldquo;Yes, oil is important and several oil companies are owed billions of dollars by Venezuela and this has been adjudicated.&rdquo;
Another critical email, more measured: &ldquo;The idea of ousting Maduro wasn't just a Trump idea. Biden thought about it but didn't have the control of his administration or the backbone.
&ldquo;Ousting Maduro seems to be because of a myriad of reasons, probably even more deeper than you even know. The players including China, Russia, Iran/Hezbollah at least. It has to be agreed that these players in our backyard have to be corrected!
&ldquo;The USA has been involved in so many conflicts far away. It's about time we keep our hemisphere safe from these bad actors.&rdquo;
Dave responds: To the first point, American companies do business overseas and get hosed by foreign governments all the time. It&rsquo;s a risk that comes with the territory of operating in countries where the rule of law isn&rsquo;t followed in the way you and I typically think of it.
Do you seriously propose that U.S. special forces be deployed every time some tinhorn dictator gives the shaft to a Fortune 500 company?
Meanwhile&hellip; to whatever extent China, Russia and Iran are meddling in the Western Hemisphere, it&rsquo;s a response to many decades of U.S. meddling in those nations&rsquo; backyards.
And that U.S. meddling is nowhere near over: Trump continues to arm Ukraine. He&rsquo;s threatening once more to bomb Iran. He continues to station nearly 80,000 troops in Japan and South Korea that China sees as a direct threat. (There is no remotely comparable Chinese presence on our doorstep.)
One more thought&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3KPOzHLBIRGKeyJQqORqVM/b2fa932380003dbe23eae1795554da7b/FMF-Issue-010626_4_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Great article, Dave. I struggle with the freedom of speech/censorship debate. In the end, I just want the truth! I can handle the truth!&rdquo; a reader writes after we <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/mafia-tactics-fcc-vs-dis">revisited</a> the Jimmy Kimmel kerfuffle over the holidays.
&ldquo;Maybe we shouldn&rsquo;t have censorship and strong-arm tactics as both the Republicans and Democrats have demonstrated they&rsquo;re not afraid to use, but there may be a better way to do this:
<ul>
<li>Require news outlets to double-source with names in published reports</li>
<li>Eliminate anonymous sources as a means to establish legitimacy for whatever is in the article. If a news outlet won&rsquo;t subject themselves to those two requirements, then they have become an opinion outlet and a banner should run above them with the following quote during their broadcast: &lsquo;This segment does not follow proper journalistic practices and should be considered opinion and LIKELY UNTRUE&rsquo;</li>
<li>If something that is reported and double-sourced is not true, the Justice Department can go after the sources and not the news outlet.</li>
</ul>
&ldquo;Maybe that will clean up the disinformation and propaganda being sold as truthful news.&rdquo;
Dave: In effect, you&rsquo;re proposing every news outlet register with the feds &mdash; and that they&rsquo;d be licensed to practice their trade.
Your intentions are noble &mdash; but you&rsquo;re putting even more power in the hands of Washington, D.C. bureaucrats than they already have!

FMF-Issue-010626(Featured)

James Altucher: Back on the Bitcoin Train

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />It Was Never About Drugs
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Gee what was the title of our Nov. 18 edition?
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7jisCiWvsqCObI1sLN0MS8/f2aa19548d7f69bc6c11366858167318/fmf_headline.jpg" alt="5 Bullets Headline" />
And there was Donald Trump on Saturday, saying as much as he read from a prepared statement: &ldquo;We&rsquo;re going to have our very large United States oil companies&hellip; go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country.&rdquo;
We&rsquo;ll come back to the &ldquo;making money&rdquo; thought shortly &mdash; seeing as that&rsquo;s our stock in trade.
But do note that when the deposed Venezuelan President Nicol&aacute;s Maduro goes to court in New York today, there won&rsquo;t be one word about fentanyl &mdash; because that word shows up nowhere in the 25-page indictment. (On the other hand, Maduro is charged with possessing machine guns in his own country &mdash; which somehow runs afoul of the 1934 National Firearms Act?!)
Also note Trump&rsquo;s pardon late last year of the former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez. Hernandez was doing 45 years for&hellip; drug trafficking.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Conventional wisdom has it that the story is already over. Reality check: It&rsquo;s just beginning.
The president who for years derided nation-building projects now says Washington will &ldquo;run the country&rdquo; of Venezuela &ldquo;for the time being.&rdquo;
&ldquo;For the time being,&rdquo; Trump has thrown Maduro&rsquo;s opposition under the bus, knowing it has little public support, figuring he stands a better chance of stabilizing the situation with&hellip; Maduro&rsquo;s vice president?!
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7ArNTOJEv8eRld1OI0OkV4/13fff2951c031c5e5b104bd8d546dd34/fmf_wsj_headline.jpg" alt="WSJ Headline" />
Hmmm&hellip; Vice President Delcy Rodr&iacute;guez&rsquo;s father was tortured to death by a pro-Washington regime in 1976, when she was 6 years old. As far as she&rsquo;s concerned, she says Maduro is still the rightful president.
Again, the story is just beginning &mdash; victory laps you see on social media notwithstanding.
Which brings us to the investment implications&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />About That Oil Bounty&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Talking about investment prospects in post-Maduro Venezuela is as premature as it was with post-Saddam Iraq in 2003 or post-Gaddafi Libya in 2011.
Not that reality has dawned yet on Mr. Market this morning: The oil field services stocks like Schlumberger (SLB) and Halliburton (HAL) are both up over 6%.
But how likely is it, really, that &ldquo;our very large United States oil companies&rdquo; are poised to sweep into Venezuela and exploit the world&rsquo;s biggest oil reserves after years of neglect under Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Ch&aacute;vez? And even if they do, how quickly would those reserves come into production?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Oil is not water you just turn on from a faucet,&rdquo; tweets an anonymous hedge fund portfolio manager.
&ldquo;Look at the oil patches in the U.S. and Canada &mdash; these are world-class assets with the best infrastructure, labor and capital inflow on the planet. Go out there just once and see for yourself how oil is actually discovered, drilled and transported.
&ldquo;Even in these top-tier jurisdictions, things don&rsquo;t move that fast. And yet, you think infrastructure and networks that have been rotting for decades under underinvestment, neglect and corruption can just be restored overnight?&rdquo;
That takes a massive infusion of capital &mdash; which is hard for the industry to justify when oil is trading near five-year lows.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />And that&rsquo;s assuming Venezuela does not descend into Iraq- or Libya-level chaos.
The Venezuelan-American journalist Jos&eacute; Ni&ntilde;o foresees a worst-case scenario &mdash; &ldquo;a multifactional civil war among heavily armed irregular forces, refugee flows dwarfing the current crisis and a protracted insurgency that could justify further U.S. intervention and spiral into a broader conflict that could attract irregular leftist forces from across the region.&rdquo;
Trump refuses to rule out &ldquo;boots on the ground&rdquo; to impose Washington&rsquo;s will on a country that&rsquo;s more than twice the land area of Iraq &mdash; featuring everything from Andean mountains to Amazon jungle.
&ldquo;This geographic complexity creates countless opportunities for asymmetric warfare,&rdquo; Ni&ntilde;o wrote last fall &mdash; &ldquo;with mountainous terrain favoring defensive operations, urban centers ideal for guerrilla resistance and jungle regions providing sanctuary for irregular forces&hellip;
&ldquo;It should be stressed that Venezuela&rsquo;s official military doctrine has been explicitly designed around asymmetric warfare against a hypothetical U.S. invasion since the Ch&aacute;vez era. The strategy assumes initial conventional defeat followed by sustained guerrilla resistance &mdash; making occupation costly and politically unsustainable.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />And if Trump decides not to play ball with Acting President Rodr&iacute;guez after all? 
That seems quite likely, by the way: &ldquo;If she doesn&rsquo;t do what&rsquo;s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,&rdquo; Trump told The Atlantic yesterday.
&ldquo;The Venezuelan opposition itself is deeply divided,&rdquo; Ni&ntilde;o writes.
The Nobel Peace Prize-winning Mar&iacute;a Corina Machado gets all the headlines, begging for American-engineered regime change &mdash; but she doesn&rsquo;t speak for all of Maudro&rsquo;s rivals.
&ldquo;Most people who want a military solution and a U.S. invasion do not live in Venezuela,&rdquo; says Henrique Capriles &mdash; who lost an election to Maduro in 2013 and has stayed in Venezuela throughout. &ldquo;They don&rsquo;t even understand the consequences of it,&rdquo; he told the BBC last summer.
He added pointedly to The New York Times, &ldquo;Name one successful case in the last few years of a successful U.S. military intervention.&rdquo;
A U.S. war game conducted during the first Trump administration concluded that U.S. intervention would result in &ldquo;chaos for a sustained period of time with no possibility of ending it,&rdquo; national security consultant Douglas Farah wrote in a report to Pentagon officials.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />The Rush to Gold
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The financial consequences of regime change in Venezuela extend far beyond energy.
A group of 17 former U.S. intelligence professionals wrote an open letter to Donald Trump in November, warning that &ldquo;U.S. &lsquo;maximum-pressure&rsquo; policies and saber-rattling in the Caribbean make us look like bullies throughout Latin America if not the world &mdash; a hegemon desperate to show it can act ruthlessly and with impunity in what it considers its backyard.&rdquo;
And now that Maduro is in the dock?
A handful of financial professionals on X compare the present moment to Joe Biden&rsquo;s decision four years ago to freeze the dollar-based assets of Russia&rsquo;s central bank.
As we&rsquo;ve hammered away in this space ever since, that one move prompted every government on less-than-friendly terms with Washington to wonder, Are we next?
One more time, a chart we can&rsquo;t share often enough &mdash; showing how central bank accumulation of gold soared since 2022. (The 2025 figures are through the end of the third quarter.)
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5pVBWUP9xWBa2I7OBGOZfF/2ea7a665fbba825ebdb335b1579844c2/5Bullets_Chart_110525.png" alt="Chart" />
&ldquo;If the freezing of Russian assets in 2022 was the crack in the foundation of global finance, the capture of Nicol&aacute;s Maduro in Operation Absolute Resolve is the sledgehammer,&rdquo; says one observer. &ldquo;When money isn&rsquo;t safe, countries accelerate de-dollarization and diversify into hard assets like gold and Bitcoin that exist outside the &lsquo;clutch&rsquo; of any single jurisdiction.&rdquo;
U.S. regime change in Venezuela, &ldquo;will be remembered in history for reasons most inside the West will have no understanding or comprehension of,&rdquo; says the provocative Sirius Report account on X &mdash; which also invokes the Russian asset freeze. &ldquo;Meanwhile the Global South will have finally had any lasting shred of doubt removed.&rdquo;
One more&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3dTRgLvIG6ukxSqjCV8B0g/d9c6b702af78ef38a80c4b7e9fe92831/fmf_singh_tweet.jpg" alt="Tweet" />
Is it any coincidence gold is up $111 at last check to $4,441? Or that silver is up nearly four bucks to $76.59? Or that Bitcoin sits at a seven-week high near $94,000?
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Reaping the Whirlwind: China, Iran&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Only hours before the U.S. operation to capture Maduro, he was meeting with a high-level delegation from China &mdash; led by President Xi Jinping&rsquo;s special envoy to Latin America.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6yhKAz89jVTgu4tdpfaWTl/352e7a837ad5de7d8f35b0ebc1c3c27d/fmf_brics_tweet.jpg" alt="Tweet" />
As you might expect, Beijing does not look kindly on the regime-change op &mdash; the Chinese foreign ministry condemning the &ldquo;U.S.&rsquo; blatant use of force against a sovereign state and action against its president.&rdquo;
Important point: Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the U.S. blockade on sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela is still in place.
Last week, the shipping trade publication Lloyd&rsquo;s List reported that a Chinese-flagged oil tanker, the Thousand Sunny, is on its way to Venezuela to load a shipment of crude. At present its position is about halfway between Africa and South America, which puts it on track for a mid-January arrival.
Context: China has become the biggest buyer of Venezuelan oil by far. It doesn&rsquo;t particularly need Venezuelan crude; Beijing is simply propping up Maduro&rsquo;s government.
Further context: As I noted in 5 Bullets last month, a Russian vessel delivering oil-processing chemicals to Venezuela arrived at its destination without challenge. Moscow would have surely viewed an attempted boarding/seizure by U.S. forces as an act of war. No doubt Beijing sees things the same way.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />But if regime change in Venezuela doesn&rsquo;t bring on a U.S.-China confrontation, it might clear the way for a renewed conflict in the Middle East.
&ldquo;I believe the true objective of the kidnapping operation to remove Maduro is to secure U.S. control of Venezuelan oil in anticipation of a disruption of the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf when Israel, with U.S. backing, launches a new attack on Iran,&rdquo; writes former CIA officer Larry Johnson on his blog.
&ldquo;I suppose you could say that Trump&rsquo;s Monday [Dec. 29] meeting with Netanyahu, which coincided with the eruption of protests in Iran that were likely incited by the MEK &mdash; a terrorist group with direct ties to the CIA and Mossad &mdash; followed by the kidnapping of Maduro and his wife is just a happy series of coincidences&hellip; I don&rsquo;t believe in coincidence.&rdquo;
Already top Israeli politicians like former prime minister Yair Lapid are saying, &ldquo;The regime in Iran should pay close attention to what is happening in Venezuela.&rdquo;
As mentioned earlier, it&rsquo;s highly unlikely Venezuelan oil production will be stepped up to any meaningful degree anytime soon &mdash; certainly not on Israel&rsquo;s timetable.
So don&rsquo;t rule out the possibility of a major disruption to Middle East oil supplies this spring or summer &mdash; with no Venezuelan production to make up for it.
On that note, let&rsquo;s tie up some loose ends&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Loose Ends
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The oil market is sniffing out no major changes as a consequence of the Venezuelan regime-change op.
At last check, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate is up a little less than a buck to $58.20. In other words, no new major constraints to supply&hellip; but also no immediate flood of new oil to the market.
As for the stock market, the major averages are all solidly in the green, with the Dow leading the way &mdash; up nearly 1.5% and over 49,000 for the first time. That makes sense, given the higher concentration of energy stocks in the Dow compared with the other major indexes and the knee-jerk reaction to the Venezuela news.
XLE, the big energy ETF, is up 2.4% as we write. Chevron (CVX), with existing operations in Venezuela that have been subject to on-again, off-again U.S. restrictions, is up over 5%. Exxon (XOM), which has spent years funding think tanks advocating for regime change in Venezuela, is up 2.5%.
The S&amp;P 500 and the Nasdaq are both up a little less than 1% &mdash; neither in record territory, although the S&amp;P is close.
We mentioned the huge rally in precious metals earlier. Copper, meanwhile, is in record territory, over $13,000 a ton.
The one economic number of note is the ISM manufacturing index &mdash; down from 48.2 in November to 47.9 in December. That&rsquo;s weaker than expected.
Any number below 50 suggests a shrinking factory sector and except for two months early last year, the index has registered sub-50 readings consistently for three years.
We&rsquo;ll leave it there for today. We&rsquo;ll tackle more diverse subject matter and catch up on the mailbag tomorrow.
P.S. If memory serves, this might be only the third time I&rsquo;ve devoted the entirety of an issue (more or less) to breaking news.
I daresay the first two have held up pretty well &mdash; the attempt on Donald Trump&rsquo;s life <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-madness-is-just-beginning" target="_blank" rel="noopener">18 months ago</a> and the immediate aftermath of Jan. 6 <a href="https://5minforecast.com/2021/01/07/a-riot-by-another-name/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">five years ago</a>. Only one big flub in retrospect; there were definitely law enforcement who allowed protesters into the U.S. Capitol.
More tomorrow&hellip;